Procrastinating a PhD

Last 5 blog entries seem to have a subtext occurring, being:
1.off topic
2.despondent
3.giving up
4.deletion
5.mistaken for a dummy
6.as well as being stuck in a conundrum
Aaaargh
My last exercise in 'writing in the style of' is an article on researcher responsibility and is still on my laptop, albeit a shiny new one :)
but the article is not writing itself :(
Seems to have got waylaid.

Today i have
...synched the phone camera to the laptop
...moved photos into my iphoto library
...been to starbucks and read the newspaper, opened the laptop, edited a paragraph and got distracted by a friend
...tidied the study a bit more
...done the washing
...checked the emails several times
And avoided the phd
mmm
I have surfed the net looking at PhD procrastination and been advised:
Look at the small picture rather than the big one; Make the steps smaller and visible
ok I can list several useful tasks on the way rather than staying with nebulous stuff like waiting on immersion in data, or writing a whole article. I could split the time a bit more creatively eg read one article, put it in endnote, watch or listen to a Latour audio, spend x mins on the writing, put the last interview from ipod onto laptop, make notes from it ... (I aim to do all of these by...I now think of a reasonable timeframe and double it)

Rethink the priorities: Could have said look at the big picture rather than the small one... i could be stuck/avoidant because what I am up to is not really needed (its a possibility). Separating wheat from chaff. I'm cool with the PhD, the article/chapter could be a distraction. Maybe shelve it for the moment and move on/ maybe blog whats there and move on without requiring completion.

If you have a writers block, write about it.
So write about being blocked...mmmm...not very successful so far.
Write intention statements
What am i going to do today? mmm And then I get to feel guilty or like a failure for not getting there? I dont think so.

Seek psychological help for perfectionism and fear of failure. I am really not in this space, at least not at the moment, I'll revisit this one when i dont want to part with what I've written.

So; I think its about not liking what I bit into with the current writing.
And maybe its about not finding it so easy to pick it up and put it down on a weekly basis as a part time student
Or maybe I'm getting a bit fudged in my thinking- crystalised vs fluid where multitasking isnt what it was, i seem stuck on completion even when its not helping me.

Back to outlining the small steps needed to complete the large one.
Finish the PhD is a bit nebulous. Andthere is also no requirement to start at the beginning. Latour advocates starting in the middle, so again I will try this (notice that, that was an intention word).
The tasks may be organized as follows: Open the colloquium document again, redate, save to the desktop.
Parts: Summary, intro, ch1:contextualising the problem, ch2 lit review; Ch3 Research methodology, ch4 Research design, ch5 Data analysis= workstories of change , incl sensitive research and my own workstory
all in less than 80,000 words, current count 24,000 words

Each tasks entails smaller tasks.
ch 2. The literature review requires annotating with whats in , out, needing additions.
ch 5. requires data immersion (in the too hard box with picking up and putting down).
But also could be added to, I think i need more artefact data analysis at YL, again, picking up and putting down frustrates this.

Overcoming Procrastination: Getting Organized to Complete the Dissertation

Tara L. Kuther, at the APA website gives some of the more useful advice: "In terms of completing tasks, it is not necessary to start at the beginning of the list, in fact, believing that one starts the dissertation proposal by writing his or her introduction and thesis and ends with the plan for analyses will detain progress. Begin where you feel comfortable and fill in the gaps. You will find that you gain momentum with the completion of each small task. Feeling overwhelmed by any particular task is a sign that you have not broken it down into small enough pieces."

Or it might be that I'm just off task;A need then to realign.

My friend Barbara Grant always said Write, write about writing...
Me, I blog it.
Being pragmatic, the thoughts are not enough, someone somewhere has to see them, they dont happen without being put out there...
William Makepeace: a thousand thoughts lay unknown until we take up a pen to write them...

Ok, i feel a bit more on task now :)

earthhour is upon us

Im sitting in the dark, hoping for appreciable drop in the external ambient illumination levels :)
Putting a vote of confidence in the peoples of this planets capacities for banding 2gether for a cause,

earth hour

.

despondent; change is so challenging

Deja vue.

I look at it and think, there's got to be reasons for it...maybe they dont know or that they forget?
But adding in wisdom externally doesn't effect the change.
And the medium doesn't create wonders of its own accord. Innovation does not diffuse itself.
There's an opportunity for change in an online teaching and learning environment, to use the medium fully, for the attributes the medium is best for... to construct, connect and engage...useful attributes for a higher ed sector, but instead what's being asked for might as well be an essay, the marking grid reflects attributes valued in the essay. That there's logical flow, spelling that's attended to...so why blog it???

Really profound change can’t be directed; it has to be nurtured.
No top-down impositions, uniform and simultaneous.
There seems a need for discovery, that conditions for innovation and the passion of individuals in a context of trust and creativity, be nurtured. Top-down solutions don't tend to reflect this.

Leverage for change requires engagement (and even of those who may not be recognised as such, human and otherwise) in creating something new.
In examples of innovation in teaching and learning, if you come back later, oftentimes things are right back where they used to be. So I wonder about the enormous forces that maintain the status quo and actor-network theory seems a really useful one in attending to the details of what shapes things.

A major leverage point on the education status quo is beautifully spotted by Senge, "We all went to school together... we all share strong common assumptions about how school is supposed to work. It is not only that we want our children to learn, we want them to learn in the way we think they should learn, or more correctly, in the way we learned."

And so we might have students learn in groups, wikis, write on blogs ... yet what's 'always been' remains influential. "The disciplines want essay writing"...and the marking grid develops in kind.
So I find myself with a marking grid that values spell checking instead of hyperlinking of ideas, or of involvement.

And shaking my head cant but wonder at how artefacts of assessment shape the learning that will occur.
And we are back to same old same old...

Off to read more Senge on nurturing change coz i dont think i can take much more of this.
Plus, have a look at 12 work-relevant characteristics of online life posted by Gary Hamel, its got a few reminders of attributes needed in the 21st century that far outweigh essay writing and spell checking :)

Giving up texting for Lent

The devil comes in many forms apparently and texting supposedly is one of them.
Cited/sighted within "to text is to sin":

Only a few months ago the Pope was using his channel on YouTube to warn against our "obsessive" use of mobile phones and the net.
This week came the news that senior Italian Catholic clerics are urging their flocks to give up texting, Facebook and Twitter for Lent.
Renouncing texting would enable young people to "detox from the virtual world and get back in touch with themselves."

Now there's several thoughts here worth exploring.
Getting in touch with oneself...mmmm...am blinded by that one 8)
Getting real...detoxing from the virtual...mmmm...
Heaven, will just have to wait.

Deleting texts does not destroy them.

"Phone companies were required to hold SMS information for up to three weeks and police were able to access that information with a search warrant."
Senior Sergeant Mike Fulcher(2007)

Vodafone is no longer storing texts, and Telecom is about to follow suit (Reported in NZ Herald, July 28, 2007)
Police were able to obtain copies of text messages but a decision by the two big mobile phone companies to stop storing text messages is costing the police an investigatory tool.
The change, caused by the companies' introduction of new equipment, raised debate among police and lawyers about whether a law change should be sought to require the information to be kept. This was seen as not practical, because:

"It [text content] was a source so we will just have to rely on other means," Mr Peoples said.
If police considered an investigation was serious enough, they could apply for an interception warrant which would enable voice and text calls to be captured as they happened.
And, Police can still obtain records of text calls, but not the text.

Stimulating simulation conversation; being treated like a dummy

Seems Highered has only just caught up with simulation teaching and learning hazards as if this were a new technology/computer generating hazard.
The main issue identified by Sherry Turkle is the concern of transparency. And I agree. However, it seems superficial for both Highered and Turkle to only report the the wired hazards. Seems a little to easy to get a headline by demonising the online aspects involved. I would suggest taking this a step further as whether its a didactic class, a role play, or a session that is computer generated, there is always a need for critical thinking about what is learned and unlearned in such an environment.
Sherry Turkle is cited as being concerned that computer simulations introduce strange problems into reality. There is bias present in the title of her latest book 'Simulation and Its Discontents' (MIT Press) that tracks difficulties arising when simulation—from virtual-reality chambers for nuclear-weapon testing to computer programs for architectural design becomes integral in our daily and professional lives.
I do share some of her concern regarding what is accidently taught in simulations, and suggest looking at both first and second level impacts in the use of technologies. (For further reading refer to Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections. New ways of working in the networked organization. Cambridge: MIT Press.)

I work in a health sector and it concerns me that a simulation of work with a patient may accidently teach that what you say or do doesnt matter so long as the task performed on the sim-man is technically proficient. A patient may live through the treatment, only to experience further abuse in being treated like a dummy.

A Latourian conundrum, please help.

"Existence precedes essence". Bruno Latour (1993)
from Latour, B. (1993). Pasteur on lactic acid yeast: A partial semiotic analysis. Configurations, 1(1), 129-146.

However, isn't this a chicken and egg dilemma?
i think therefore I am, I am therefore I think.
Or crudely, I think and then I do.... I do and then I think, whats preceding?
Isn't there's always a before?
I get that things get shaped iteratively, for example:
I can do counselling, and in the performance their is an essence, or several essences; belonging, being in the moment...empathy. They dont exist outside of performance, but htey are aspired to and recognised as valuable in a therapeutic interaction...and therefore they are taught and aspired to...seems to me ts an 'and and' issue.

To adapt some Latourian critique of Pasteur and turn it on Latour himself:
Is Latour not giving his entity a little nudge forward? ...He is doing the action, he has prejudices, he is filling the gap?
Are not the metalinguistic resources that I apply handed to me directly by the author...

Well yes, and it leaves me stuck. I think there's a middle ground here that could be better explored. Latour (2005) in Reassembling the social, suggests its always best to start in the middle and maybe I have taken this literally, that there is always a middle? And therefore the apparent inconsistency of existence preceding essence.

However, Latour (1993) also admonishes:
"As long as we have not understood why what appears to us as a contradiction is not one for Pasteur (read Latour), we do not learn from those we study--we simply impose our philosophical categories upon their work."

And so i stay stuck, I feel like I am in a mobius strip.
So I have some uncertainty here, and I'd truly like it discussed. Please help me with this, its interfering with my sleep and my study.

BTW I found my folder :)

Phdling in cloud cuckoo land

I have misplaced my phd notes.
They are in a beautiful, light blue, embossed, tactile pleasant A4 folder.
The nature of the folder is important, there was something inherently satisfying in the beauty of the object, an object i could touch.
I had recently shifted work offices but am reasonably sure the loss postdates the move.
I had recently also cleaned out the spare room where my notes used to fight for space with wall to wall mess but is now tidied ... i suspect I put them somewhere carefully at this stage, and though the room is now accessible, the space is still not suited to PhDling.
And I have searched boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes. Just four. And under the sofas and all the usual places (under the bed, in the car) as well as rounding up the usual subjects.
Note no. 2 for the farside equivalent of a desk calendar to be written in the postdoc life for prepostdoc students: keep your notes in the cloud....scan them....pdf file them....put them into the ephemeral digital world.....email them to yourself...avoid the seduction of the terrestrial world, live and study in cloud cuckoo land, its safer.

Having one's head in the clouds, far from being a derogatory comment, is an extremely wise option, and assuming i find said notes at work in the mess of my desk, I will scan and copy as pdf and place these in the emphemeral cloud network.

It is not a case of “either or” but of “and, and”.

But it’s not the original, it’s just a facsimile!”. How often have we heard such a retort when confronted with an otherwise perfect reproduction of a painting? No question about it, the obsession of the age is for the original version. Only the original possesses an aura, this mysterious and mystical quality that no second hand version will ever get. But paradoxically, this obsession for pinpointing originality increases proportionally with the availability and accessibility of more and more copies of better and better quality.

In discussing “The Migration of the Aura – Exploring the Original through Its Facsimiles” (2008) Latour explores an area that is patently contentious.
Bruno Latour says unequivocally the existence of something precedes its essence; the question is, does it? While I disagree with Kvond who appears to argue against this proposition with reference to art, yet his argument to my mind demonstrates exactly what Latour says. The minutae of detail, the pressure of the paint on the page, the texture of brushstrokes and the variability in paint pigmentation...are all 'things' preceding essence. Essence came in the aggrargation of such things in a time and place and viewed in a context, or so I understand Latour. But what then of other 'things'?
I find myself comparing these arguments of authentic art to the stories I have heard when talking of the shift of phone counselling to text. And am also reminded of the historic stories captured on moving conversation to phones. But to stay with counselling for the moment, is its 'essence' lost when the medium changes? The logic from Latours argument, is that it cant be as essence is always preceded by existence.
And now i get tangled up in knots, for what of the photo vs the painting? The reproduction has no pressure on the page, the pigmentation and colour 'enhancement' alters the rendition, the size becomes immaterial, the context within which it is shifts...how many have commented on the smallness and darkness of the Mona Lisa. The original compared with a multiple hord of facsimilies is altere and sometimes rendered a dissapointment. Klimt's mother and child becomes more known than its original source, the three ages of women C.1905. Edited enhancement for popular release? If essence is in the existence, what is loved by the masses becomes a projection.

Latour takes the argument further from photography to plastic surgery. I would anticipate the argument to be its not better or worse but different, that translation creates a new entity.

Hidden behind the commonsense distinction between original and mere copies, lies a totally different process that has to do with the technical equipment, the amount of care, the intensity of the search for the originality that goes from one version to the next. Before being able to defend itself for re-enacting the original well or badly, a facsimile is discredited beforehand because it is associated with a gap in techniques of reproduction. A gap based on a misunderstanding of photography as an index for reality.

Instead of arguing a better or worse, there is space for arguing not the either or, but the "and,and". The photo is different. "Photographs of paintings are not respected as aura entrenched primarily because the change in recording surface and technique is understood to present a change in marked causal histories" responds Kvond. The photograph brings with it, its own aggragations, one of which is multiplicity for popular demand, which is noted by Latour as contributing to the originals own value.
In counselling then, is there an essence? Is being there in the moment an essence? One that cannot be replicated in the absence of synchronised connectivity? Is texting a poor facsimilie? The line of argument explored would suggest the answer is no. Instead it is different. The essence is in it's existence, not an antecedent event, but in it's being performed. Does the reproduction in another form lessen its value? Perhaps. The processes of translation from one medium to another may fail to capture the 'things' of importance , what then can be added or removed? Is it essential to counselling that it be 'in the moment' that it be synchronised not asynchronised? Far from becoming “sterile” counselling so reconstructed becomes more accessible. So where does the crime lie? I suggest it lies in the gap where the index for reality is misunderstood. Text counselling far from being barren or sterile is serving a purpose attested to by those who continue to make use of it.
It provides an option, the value of which is evident in its being used and in its ongoing development and ongoing translations.

A change manifesto

The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This is very significant because almost every problem confronting our society is a result of the fact that our public policy makers are doing the wrong things and are trying to do them righter.
Russell Ackoff

Jon at edufire expands on this for education calling on Peter Drucker's distinction on management (”doing things right”) and leadership (”doing the right things”).

Purposing becomes incredibly important under such guidance. In considering change and the integration of computer and communication technologies into a youth counselling centre, this moves the question from is this a good or bad thing, to what is our intent and how best do we get there.

With my doctoral studies, I'm looking at the relationship between how people think about change and what they do to enact it. My recall of my mess of data suggests glimmers of such thinking, am off to immerse myself in it further ...hopefully i wont drown...100s of pages, hours of audiofiles...

Does help to revisit the focus b4 i get too bogged down :)

ethnography: more than one less than many

I loved this very readable article on ethnography, it fits well inside of an actor-network informed approach. There are differences, for example ANT considers the material semiotics and provides for a symmetry in the analysis providing voice to both human and non human actants. However, most of the other differences are more to do with emphasis rather than inclusion or exclusion.
The article is not only an exceptionally thoughtful consideration for what makes for 'good' ethnography, it points to the variance is ethnography, is clear on what is/is not despite the variance and is exceptionally well written.
Thanks cj for sharing the link.

Agar, Michael (2006). An Ethnography By Any Other Name … [149 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 7(4), Art. 36, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0604367.

A web of good intent; communicating care using IT

Both Latour and Sloterdijk (Feb 17, 2009) caution designers to be mindful of their critical role in humanizing both public and private spaces. This can also be extended to what occurs in the space that is the web. What happens when we use such spaces for being connected, for meeting not only to exchange ideas, not only to exchange pages of knowledge or data, but also for interaction and particularly for emotional support?
There is then need to study the conditions, the relationships, the facets that make such 'being' a possibility.

Latour contends that it is the business of designers to recapture the “healing spaces” of the past — places that provide “immunity,” he said. Sloterdijk called these desired spaces “apartments” that are “a world for a single person … anthropogenic islands … that make human life possible.” I'm thinking that such places are not always so visible, but that 'the web' also holds such possibility. Twitter as described by Ewen Williams as a means to communicate for good, as well as the Youthline NZ experience of texting and emailing for counselling purposes are examples where this is occurring, and there are also numerous examples including where online support groups evolve through to deliberate use of web 2.0 as Beth Kanters network attests. In addition are educational contexts where students within a Health Faculty on placement can also be supported in a reflective environment, and my own experioences of postgraduate study... each of these point to a web of possibilty recapturing nurturing if not healing or enhancing spaces.

Latour holds that it would take “several decades” for humans to use the Web to its full potential for interactivity and “virtual witnessing” in the meantime it remains little more than a means of “reproducing pages.” Seems most uses are still in this area, yet there are also technosocial stories that challenge this and may help in shaping future possibilities when shared. There is therefore a need to understand and explore such possibilties. In doing this, the little things, the apparently superficial or trifle also need to be considered, for as explained by Latour:

"There’s not the slightest chance to understand being when it has been cut off from the vast numbers of apparently “trifle” [sic] and “superficial” “little beings” that make it exist from moment to moment." Bruno Latour, Feb 17, 2009.

Reference
Latour, B., & Sloterdijk, P. (2009, 17 February ). Networks and Spheres: Two Ways to Reinterpret Globalization; Presentation at Harvard University. Retrieved 3 March, 2009, from http://sorcerer.design.harvard.edu/gsdlectures/s2009/sloterdijk.mov

(nb the movie seems to require University quality of bandwidth to open)

Twitter changes

This post is in response to the TED talk (Feb, 2009) by Evan Williams: How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected users.

A summation of the 8 minute transcript- without visuals. The absence of visuals alters whats involved in the tedtalk; take into account that live feeds of tweet are an aspect that a transcript doesnt show, and interestingly graphics associated are ironic given twitter is not a picture oriented medium.

4 years ago on the ted stage i announced a company ODEo, raised venture capital and hired an engineer called Jack Dorsey, and a year later when deciding which way to go with ODEO Jack presented an idea he had been tinkering with for around with for a number of years around sending simple status updates to friends and we put two and two together and early 2006 launched twitter as a side product (had earlier launched blogger as a side product and it took over my life, so i learned to follow hunches even though cant really justify them or know where they are going to go.) Twitter based on a very simple seemingly trivial concept, you say what yu want to say in 140 characters or less, and people interested in you get those updates, and if there really interested in you they will get it on cell ph. in my case 60,000 people receive message in seconds sharing of momentus or mundane moments, sharing these moments as theyre happening despite distance and in real time, what we didnt anticipate were many other uses that would eveolve from this very simple system, eg during real time events, eg wildfires San Diego Oct 2007, people turned to twitter to find out what was happening, neighbours, but not just individuals LA times even dispensed with an rss feed, 100s and 1000s around the world then follow coz they want to know what its like to be here. There is also businesses eg to an insanely pop korean bbq truck as to where it will stop....47 members of congress, president himself most popular twitterer, even in presidential circles...originally designed as a broadcast medium, you send one message and it goes out to everyone, one of many ways users shaped was inventing a way to respond eg syntax @ailsa...and we didnt invent this or write this in, the users did, and they have shaped another is through api , it further, writing currently we know of 2000 applications interface either mac or windows, iphone or blackberry or even a baby when it kicks or a plant twitter when its thirsty.

Twitter search engines, an incredible resource to find out about any topic or event while its going on. We liked this so much we bought the company and built it into the main one of my favourites was following a gas shortage in Atlanta, appending a specific tag to allow others to search and to find out... a trend of people using it to help each other out, whether raising money or keeping contacts. Seems when you give people easier ways to share information, more good things happen. I have no idea what will happen next with twitter, I have learnt to follow the hunch but never assume where it will go.

As a story of change there are some fascinations here; change happens in tinkering, is iterative, is altered by users and designers, comes out of a history, the seemingly trivial can yield significance, whats designed differs from what is, whats envisaged differs from what is, shaped in practice...and that where things will go to is known retrospectively rather than in advance.
In contrast with conventional change theory wisdom such as that proposed in E. M Rogers diffusion of innovation text, it is evident that:
Technology is not so much diffused as infused; altering what it touches and in turn is also altered.
Unanticipated second level effects can be as powerful or more powerful than the expected or first level effects.
The myth of early adopters doesnt get a look in here; rather than who or how it is pushed is its perceived usefulness whether or not such planned usefulness was a factor or not.
Being connected or having a sense of this appears to matter to people. As Evan Williams notes here, having more means of communicating seems to make good things happen.

assemblages versus assemblies

I had been listening to a lecture given on assemblages versus assemblies by Bruno Latour in 1993, Milano (link is also available on the Anthem site). In it he reminds us of how pictures do not capture the intricacies and complexities of the network. He describes the limitations that are involved in representations that are not telling the whole picture. He uses the example of a space shuttle that until there is a catastrophe, the inner workings and the work of having produced this 'thing' remain hidden, blackboxed.
You could also take the example, as i did this weekend, where i bought a beautiful daybed off trade me (NZ equivalent to e-bay). I had anticipated a kitset/flatpack delivery for making this up. Instead it came fully made BUT wouldnt fit through the doors so needed dissassembly. In the rain. (A bit like a Hemmingway novel at this point). To dissassemble required Alan keys, not provided, and when some were obtained, this required two sizes, and the bolts involved 4 sizes, and some dooflickies i dont even know what their names are. Once undone and moved, further assemblage issues, what goes back in where??? And so the simplistic diagram that one expects with any IKEA type furniture would have come into its own, had it been provided. But it wasnt. And then there's the other parts of the picture not evident, there are people that make this happen, importers, markets, delivery persons, cash on delivery, ATM visit, the person for whome the bed was needed...
How to put make this fuller picture?
Here's what Exonn has for an answer :)

Wrapping up CCK08; Assessment matters; focus on being knowledge-able rather than knowledgeable.

My issues were:
1. an annoying split between formally enrolled for credit and those not
2. the value of ANT (actor-network theory) informing connectivism
And to some extent both were addressed in the wrap up.
Future renditions of the course might spend a pre course time in developing skills working with the technologies involved. This acknowledges the influence of non human actors on the learning possibilities, a very ANT accepting alteration. And the issue of difference for those taking the course for credit, or not, evolved into a conversation on assessment matters:

Innovative assessment being a significant block to creativity in education.In higher ed at least, assessment drives learning and how might this be altered? Currently what someone thinks they know is matched to what they think the learning should be about, and this predefined view limits learning. "What if assessment no longer drives instruction, instead assessment could be a byproduct evaluating at set times eg an eportfolio."
I had always considered assessment as a sample of student work and it frustrates me when i see it considered as driving and therefore limiting, the learning that occurs.

To my mind, even if we were to shift to an eportfolio approach this is still likely to reflect the limits imposed by the start stop nature inherent in the University where what goes into the portfolio is still controlled by those who think they know what is needed setting the tasks that accrue in an eportfolio...

What was better about the CCK08 course was i set my own goals more or less around a particular theme. It wasn't a predefined learning curve. The timeline was controlled, more or less and for those enrolled for credit even more so, but for myself its an example of a more open learning style. It is an example where what i developed 'inside' of CCK08 is useful to me for other purposes, my Doctorate, my career as an academic...
A reminder from Stepehen, 'assessessment tends to be a proxy measure'. That is, assessment tends to be of knowledge about rather than knowledge for. Might we focus instead on measures of being knowledge-able rather than knowledgeable?

If web 2.0 is the answer, what was the question?

Web2.0 is not the holy grail. Web 2.0 will not provide instant harmony or longlife.
IT does not deploy itself. It does not establish its own trajectory magically solving the ills of inadequate relating.
Tis a means to an end and not an end in itself.
While it is more than 'just a tool', it is not 'the' answer.
This rant was provoked by a proposal that web 2.0 would help to resolve dysfunctional team dynamics.
Its a bit like outsourcing IRD to a place where the people aren't, thus minimizing attacks on staff.
Web 2.0 the answer? Yeah right.
Show some respect; get the trust, empathy and unconditional positive regard right first and the people might relate better.

He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata! He tangata! He tangata!
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!

a blinking entanglement; digital youth culture

Publics are, argued Latour, not a singular pregiven entity (‘The Public’) that we can assume to simply exist, ready to be consulted when, and if needed, but an entity whose visibility is variable and intermittent: blinking into view only when, and if, the lighthouse beam of a controversy falls on them, or to use a different metaphor, when finding themselves entangled within one. And we should be careful, continued Latour, to assume that these publics are necessarily the same as those who are spoken for, whether by governments, companies, activists and NGOs. Because publics ‘blink on’, only when a particular controversy escapes the ability of these very spokespersons to adequately resolve them. Part of our job as researchers becomes to remain attentive to the ‘coarse signs’ that signal towards the existence of, or transformations in these controversies.

What consequences might this apparently abstract debate have for the objects we study?

I came across this question while following a google alert on Latour, where a blog posting by Joe Deville provoked some thinking on my part. Performed identity is an area i have been attending to recently. Seems a youth culture is one of these blinking entanglements.

In looking at young people's use of mobile technologies for counselling, it becomes easy to say that x is part of youth culture... and that use of x is part of a young person's identity... is it a bit like saying the landline is a part of a middle aged culture and shapes the identity of middle aged people?
Well, yes.
We are shaped in association.
And its also going to be messier than that, as not all young people, middle aged people all do the same things...and they/we dont do it all the time.

ps. I am wanting to read a transcript or listen to an audiofile of Bruno Latours address on The changing dynamics of public controversies, if you know of a link, please leave it here...thanks in anticipation :D

Advice for a PhD; the kiss approach and taking one step at a time

"It's entirely possible that you will choose a niche that's too small. It's much more likely you'll shoot for something too big and become overwhelmed. When in doubt, overwhelm a small niche." Seth Godin

The advice from my supervisor
1. A picture of where i want to be at the end of the PhD above my desk: Matakana Brickbay sculpture trail. (The photo is of Mary_Louise Browne's artwork at Brickbay,Matakana on the sculpture trail.)
2. A box below the picture to save the ideas in for the post doc life. Happy and fascinated as I am with my topic, there is a word limit, and a time limit,and a life....In the words of Latour; a good thesis is a finished one.
3. "If its not last weeks cure for cancer, leave it out." cj

About the artwork, seen today in misty rain, a perfect medium for the bluestone carved words:
MIST MOST LOST LOSE LOVE LORE LORN LOIN LAIN RAIN
Its about journeying. One can enter stairs going up or down. The stone has both words and meaning. A simple play on changing one letter in each word transforms one up and down on an emotional journey also.

objects we think with; I am therefore I think...revisited

I'd been cleaning out my parents unit and came across a wooden folding ruler and a wooden pyramid shaped 3d ruler and these reminded me of ways of thinking. I was reminded of maths classes where slide rules were the technology of the moment and log books...I couldn't use either now - I was going to say for love nor money. Love of such 'technology' and my Dads old tools could pique my curiosity.
And then in my google alerts there was a prompt to Sherry Turkle on Evocative objects; Things we think with. A student, gnaedigefrau, had a task to match a self taken photo and some poetry, and it got me thinking, again. My laptop has me thinking, the connectivity of the internet has me thinking...and I have to concede that things i think with include people, friends and strangers. I had been tagged to write of 25 things about myself in facebook, and it got me thinking...
I was 'mucking about' and fluttered into twitter, and there Colin Warren provoked some more thinking, an exercise in networking where a ball of wool was thrown around a lecture theatre symbolically concretising the networks.

There are multiple layers or realities involved in this provocation to thinking, the performance involves multiple realities of intimacy within a public space, and of being a thoughtful phd student while also being a lecturer...and I am reminded students will be blogging their learning too in the knowledge and enquiry paper, and how the tracing of thinking becomes possible with hypertext links making some of this more overt. A committment to what Wesch refers to as being knowledge able as oppossed to knowledgable.

I'm now seeing in Latour's writing when he writes of an ANT informed analysis as being a way to see, for instannce a cloth, folded, and refolded where what is illuminated is subject to change. And that this too is a performance, and the researchers own part in this is a further aspect to whats performed, whats seen and not seen. That reality is more than a perspective, its an engagement and it is not fixed, actors and artefacts are all shaped in combination. Mol talked of the ways different people engaged with arteriosclerosis, showing the multiplicity of this disease entity, but what of how the same actor engages differently at different times. Here's where there's an opening for investigating identity work.
I behave differently here than there, with these things rather than those things...My thinking is shaped by the tools i use, and is also presented differently because of the tools used.

Not killing the genius within or waiting on magical fairy juice. Performative identity work in writing a PhD

My blog had begun to go round in circles on change and I am trusting the move sideways to identity work is not a distraction. I have an inking its part of the same issue, for in as much as we change things, we too are changed.

Elizabeth Gilbert describes a way of being both normal and a genius. Its not the language of performative identity that she uses, but I believe she is writing of identity work.

While Annemarie Mol describes performativity occurring as different people work alongside others in a hospital and where arteriosclerosis is multiple as described in the stories where it is managed/treated/lived with, in contrast Elizabeth Gilbert is an author describing how she is both divine and human, creative and mundane; pressured to always be performing at peak.
And then I began thinking of my own lack of progress...

The following is a synopsis based on Kim Zetters write up
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/ted-how-we-kill.html

"Allowing somebody ... to believe that he or she is ... the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, internal mystery is just like a smidge of too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche," she said. "It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all of these unnatural expectations about performance. I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years."

She acknowledged that an audience filled with rational-minded people would balk at the idea of creativity as a kind of "mystical fairy juice" that's bestowed on someone. But she said it made as much sense as anything ever posited to explain the "utter, maddening, capriciousness of the creative process."

Elizabeth Gilbert relayed a story that musician Tom Waits told her years ago. One day he was driving on a Los Angeles freeway when a fragment of a melody popped into his head. He looked around for something to capture the tune -- a pencil or pen -- but had nothing to record it.

He started to panic that he'd lose the melody and be haunted by it forever and his talent would be gone. In the midst of this anxiety attack, he suddenly stopped, looked at the sky, and said to whatever force it was that was trying to create itself through the melody, "Excuse me. Can you not see I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment ... otherwise go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."

Waits said his creative process, and the heavy anxiety that permeated it, changed that day. In releasing the creative force, he realized that creativity "could be a peculiar, wondrous, bizarre collaboration and conversation between Tom and the strange external genius that was not Tom," Gilbert said.

She recalled his story when she was in the midst of writing her (now top selling book) Eat, Pray Love and fell into a pit of despair when she felt blocked. She said aloud to whatever entity it was that usually helped her but was on furlough that day that if the book didn't turn out to be good it wasn't going to be entirely her fault since she was putting everything she had into the project. "So if you want [the book] to be better, then you've got to show up and do your part of the deal," she told it. "But I'll keep writing anyway, because that's my job. And I'd like the record to report today that I showed up."

I'm looking forward to the release of the Ted2009 talk.

And so for the record...
I'd like to report,today I showed up, today I'm human.
I'm having a Zen moment where before and after enlightenment there's still work to do.
And I am happy to accept my capacity for being genius and human is sometimes not performed concurrently, but performed within a compartmentalised life :)

Change: Invention as the mother of necessity

Necessity is the mother of invention.
Interesting turn around.
There is lots of evidence that demand does not create supply and that instead whats invented is then repurposed and a demand created.
The space shuttles needed heat resistance; teflon gets invented. And then its adapted, translated....teflon in so much more...frypans, spatulas, irons, ironing boards, fire retardent clothes, heat resistant anything and ... The invention creates unexpected and unanticipated supplies and demands. Some unwanted...
(Not related to teflon but to chemicals in coolants, we have fire retardent chemicals in polar bear fur and the levels of prozac in recirculated water in the north seas is measurable though subtherapeutic ...)

When things change, there is also a change of things.

In txt messaging, the technology was developed for one purpose, gets coopted for another, creating needs. My daughter needs her text capable phone...so now do I. But i never had the need before the product came along. And there's an ongoing ripple effect, the expectation of always being on/always on you...creating expectations of connectivity...your best friend is only as far away as your pocket...and will apparently (if i listen to the advertising hype) always be available to me, always want to be and always positive.
If it hadnt already existed, telephone counselling would need to be invented.
And reshaped, meeting a need by being reconfigured in a format that suits its target group, young people....

Shaping practice

Client centered therapy
Student centered learning
What next?
Employee centered workplaces?
:)
Apparently not.
Research is overwhelming, 90% of the literature does not endorse open plan offices.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1114300/Open-plan-offices-lead-stress-flu-raised-blood-pressure-study-finds.html
Evidence based practice?
Apparently not.

On power, durability, resistance and survival in a climate of change

Bruno Latour writes

Strenght does not come from concentration, purity and unity, but
from dissemination, heterogeneity and the careful plaiting of weak ties.
This feeling that resistance, obduracy and sturdiness is more easily
achieved through netting, lacing, weaving, twisting, of ties that are weak
by themselves, and that each tie, no matter how strong, is itself woven out
of still weaker threads, permeates for instance Foucault's analysis of
micro-powers as well as recent sociology of technology. But the less
intuitive philosophical basis for accepting an ANT is a
background/foreground reversal: instead of starting from universal laws
-social or natural- and to take local contingencies as so many queer
particularities that should be either eliminated or protected, it starts
from irreducible, incommensurable, unconnected localities, which then, at a
great price, sometimes end into provisionnaly commensurable connections.

This is a reminder to me that 'power' is not something to curl up and die in the face of...its made of little things. Its not nebulous, its not plaited ropes of sand.

I am reminded, again, of my background in critical social theory, and how to reconcile this with the descriptive form of actor- network theory. Here I have it. Power is plaited.

The man who writes to the masters of Pig Island
about the love they dread
plaits ropes of sand
but i was born among them
and someday will lie amngst their dead

James K Baxter (New Zealand poet)

Phd's: an act of faith or congealed labor

'think of technology as congealed labor' so says Latour (1994) On technical mediation - Philosophy, sociology, geneology. Common knowledge, 3(2), 29-65.

I am thinking how naive I ever was to think I might study change and understand how change occurs. My insight now is that I/we can only ever have limited knowledge.
What I might know is only what i can congeal at that moment. What at a particular time is held together. In looking I observe more, I broaden a picture, but there's always more, the traces are never fully made. And I suspect some of the traces I make might be seen by others as distractions or only loosely connected. The researcher is always situated. What brings me to this?
The path of being a Phd student is anything but straight. The iterative processes have me doubting my purpose and any end product. I sense that I might lose myself in navel gazing but for a willingness to consider a Phd as an act of faith made real; A pragmatic piece of work thats done when its done.

"I rely on many delegated actions that themselves make me do things on behalf of
others who are no longer here and that I have not elected and the course of whose
existence I cannot even retrace."

Latour (1994)
Taking this further; when i think i am acting, more than just me is acting, I am a product too of past and current actors, as are others involved, both human and otherwise. I might be able to say of the actors I identify, that they had such and such an influence, but even in this my sight will be limited to what I am able to perceive and uncover.
To use another of Latours analogies; at any time, some parts of the cloth will be more, and less, uncovered.

Multiple realities or alternate perspectives

Elderly care provokes alternate realities to consider. With Annemarie Mol the issue of other perspectives or multiple realities was always a sticking point for me; what was the difference?
Mol would state that in alternate perspectives the view remains the same just seen from different angles. I have had to mull this over for a considerable time before being willing and able to totally endorse this. But she is right. My mum and i do no look at the same view. We are in different realities when looking at the options available.
We might as well be in parallel universes.

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.

It's the conversation that matters

Debating value in text counselling can usefully be viewed as a debate over what constitutes the boundaries of said texts.
The value is in the conversation, organic and open, and not in the transmitted increments. Yet wariness on the value of text messaging for counselling, more often then not, is because the focus stays on the transmitted increments, that is, singular messages of 160 characters or less, rather than the conversation. The analogous argument would be to criticize face to face- or any other form of counselling- based on sentences. The overall experience would be lost.

What is new about txt counselling?
It enables new forms of intimacy, new ways to perform counselling with distributed participants and new forms of performative practice. What then arises are differences in relating that can be considered.
1) What does txt counselling do to our sense of time and place and of being there for someone? Or as Jean Baudrillard provokes, what changes in the relationship when "the instantaneity of communication has miniaturized our exchanges into a succession of instants"?
2) There is a lot of "work" that goes into txt counselling, and this work is not always transparent, how is it configured, what reshaping occurs for counsellors and counsellees, as well as consideration for who benefits from the shift?
3) And a further problematic consideration: sms messaging is, at root, a database, and we are happily populating it with text based utterances, giving little thought to the uses to which such information could be put. Participants are "users" of the data base with little knowledge of, and no control of, the database. How does or should this affect how we use these technologies?

An so its worth looking at the actors involved in the performance, and of the work involved, for at present we do not know.

Whats my mobile good for?

Apparently its better than many other means for identifying weather, not in a pet-rock sense (if its wet, its raining) but strength of signals (fade) is apparently an excellent source for accurate weather scanning.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4974542.stm
And also, apparently, for exposing my very human habits.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7433128.stm
Seems my mobile has me covered in more ways than I realised.

Given that its seen by the BBC and by Pew and Horizon reports for higher ed as a, if not the, significant player in 2009, I will maintain my current symbiotic relationship, even though s/he is now appearing somewhat developmentally challenged...

The BBC item identifies that there are 3 billion mobiles in the world to 1 billion PCs, my prediction for 2009 is that they will breed more prolifically and have smarter protege.

Invisible / Visible Paris

I was prompted by Lina's blog to have a look at Bruno Latour's Paris invisible exhibition (online) and was thinking about what else might be added. In traversing paris he demonstartes Paris' digital traces, and Paris woven as a city of light, I would add this:

My daughter was awarded a Jenesys scholarship to fund her AFS year in Japan student exchange, so on her hard earned savings and slavings as a checkout chick she (virtually) took me to Paris :) and here is the virtual evidence which she kindly let me take and place on my blog.
Paris becomes dispersed, a form of it having been distributed. A social that is multiple. In invisible Paris Latour puts together a montage of stories of the social. This provides me a further avenue for considering a montage of stories (similar too to Annmarie Mol on the body multiple, for structuring my own thesis).
Invisibe Paris provides a provocation to think deeply as well as in fun as well but I am really pleased to see a virtually practical application :)

A naked kiwi and making things public

Just musing on making things public. The Johari window identifies 4 quadrants regarding self disclosure. 1. Whats known to me and known to others (obviously no new knowledge here). 2. Whats known (about me)to others but not known by me (my supervisor seems to think I write well...if he keeps saying it, i may come to believe it, but it may also be that affirmations make it so or at least increase the confidence with which I write, saying the opposite could always make it worse...). 3. Whats known to me and not to others (the data analysis and combinations of learning that are unique to me, and also some things that are better kept in the box!) 4. Whats not known by others or myself (the area of new knowledge, to be discovered...the phd) But the Johari window was really only related to knowing oneself better. What of 'other things'? 

Arguably,  there are some things that maybe shouldn't be public (for further ref see Susan Leigh Star who talks of such risks in terms of social justice and vulnerabilities were they made known). And there are some things that need to be told (sensitive research via Renzetti and Lee). Latour writes of whats hidden; what's blackboxed, what's normalised but is really a construction. Behind every initiative there are masses, myriad other things holding in place, tugging, pulling.  These myriad 'others'  Latour refers to as actors - they act - pushing, pulling, some are human, some are otherwise. 

In this pulling and shoving there is also no beginning, our connections always place us in the middle of things chronologically and geographically. In citing Samual Butler, Latour also reminds us/me that  the absence of movement and the absence of voice, is also political, for silence - seen as a virtue may be because it renders us agreeable to some of our fellows... What remains said/unsaid....what is performed & not.

Latour has also performed what's usually hidden in an art gallery exhibition looking at making things public. This brought together three modes of representation usually kept apart: How to represent people? Politics. How to represent objects? Science. How to represent their collective gathering? Art. Latour provides direction for considering how things curated (deliberate) and aggregate (deliberate and otherwise).  What holds such  assemblages together  such shapes...provides imetus for considering disputed 'things' also. To this end, there is reason to consider not only what pulls things together but what also pulls or tugs or attempts to unravel...or to hold fast, to resist...and that such things too may be human and otherwise. To tell  the ontological politics then of what is  both shaped and shaping (not that we have full knowledge of everything involved). And what of whats not included but pushed away, or 'othered'? 

I spent one of Auckland's glorious days inside the Auckland museum and its exhibition of secrets. I also revisited this exhibit this very wet day online. The exhibition provides a different reality to that usually experienced in the museum. This performance was of the inner workings revealed an exhibition in its own right of the behind the scenes work. I have chosen to describe the performance of secrets at the museum alongside actor-network theory and make use of reassembling the social for providing some structure to this. The first scene is of crating and uncrating, a provocation then to thinking outside of the box in which such works were displayed. This involves appreciating that which is unknown. The opening on arrival is described as always a revelation. Long-hidden objects emerge, reviving memory and invoking  silent questions of nonvocal actors -  What am I? Where do I come from? How did I get here? Why have I been hidden for so long? What stories do I tell? The objects on display in a museum represent but a fraction of the total collection and invites viewers to therefore consider what is seen beneath what is normally portrayed -  the iceberg, not the tip. This opens up further questions of involvement and of what was deemed noteworthy. The second scene is called registration, but its really of accounting, what's in and what's out, reminding me of Latour's first source of uncertainty where groups and their makeup are/might be disputed. Every object that passes through the doors – coming or going – must be accounted for. A political act of what fits and what doesn't..."Does it fit our collection policy? Our times? Does it need special conservation work? Are there any legal or copyright issues in displaying it? And when the museum decides that something is past its use-by date – known as “de-accession” – the whole process has to happen in reverse..." The third scene extends on this, What's grouped together? Who decides? Whats the structure of the performance in other words, how are things to be taken or 'other'taken? As a source of Latourian uncertainty, this reflects distributed agency. Who are the actors involved? The fourth scene is of the way things were. The museum isn’t 'just a big display case' it’s also a working space. Many objects are old (stating the obvious) and fragile or damaged when they arrive. "The job to preserve them, sometimes even improve them, so they can be exhibited, studied, interpreted and enjoyed isn’t always easy. Some exhibits are simply beyond repair. Others have been mistreated or neglected. And some are so unusual or rare that knowing how to treat them is a challenge in itself. And then there’s the question of whether to repair something at all – perhaps the damage or the missing parts tell their own story, every bit as important as an object in “perfect” condition. Or that the 'story' as told is no longer one that is wanted to be told. The museum conservator’s role is "to balance all these considerations and stay true to the purpose of the collection or exhibition." In this there is a marked similarity with ANT research, what's uncovered involves work, how this is then treated to let actors speak for themselves, as well as consideration for how the very telling also alters. The fifth scene considers storage, "Not just any old storage, of course, because everything has its own special needs. There are very large objects, very old and delicate objects, very precious objects – and living objects too. The temperature and humidity of our storage systems has to be strictly controlled and monitored. Just as important is that we can find and access an object when it is required for research or display." The treatment of what's stored is practical as well as ethical and political and philosophical. How is content to be treated, what damage might display do, what might enhance, whats in, out, here or there... The sixth scene is of artefacts in terms of books and papers. The exhibition details 2 kilomentres of manuscripts and archives, thousands of maps, words and pictures, ideas and knowledge and inspiration. Books are described as not sitting on shelves in isolation; they interconnect with the real world. I am reminded of much that i write being stored, of the mindmaps made and connected to, and of those not and of the millions of words written and the small percentage of these that are given life within a thesis. In the exhibit is the story of a golden frog (supposedly) stolen...and recovered...or not. The story told is that the display stolen was never the real thing. My mind wonders if anything is as it seems. And there's a sense of de ja vu for this web based cybertrip, trips on itself in act seven and repeats the 5th scene. Whats available through a different search onsite are stories of the naked and the dead. No-one knows how the kiwi, or at least this particular one, lost its feathers. As the kiwi itself says, plucked if I know... whether on school based travels, or moths or insects, or whether it should be kept to show deletrious effects or of positive aspects...providing opportunity to an audience to make meaning out of what is shared. Here is a sense of Latour's third source of uncertainty for actors too have agency, the links seem to twist on themselves, what's intended and what occurs differ, there are intended and unintended effects, unanticipated as well as unknown effects. 

In reviewing this, where might this story lead, what will the reader make of it? A very Latourian moment occurs as the exhibition comes 'fullcircle". The fourth source of uncertainty is an awareness of 'things' being matters of concern rather than matters of fact, and the knowledge that things could also be assembled differently or 'other'wise. And in ending is the fith source of uncertainty as there are risks inherent in writing down meanings, as if there were but one... I am again indebted to Artichoke for bringing to my attention the museums display, and well worth repeat visits.

living and learning in cloudland

I might be able to live without it, but can I learn without it?
Topping the list of the Australian-New Zealand Horizon report, identifying emergent technologies and key trends in higher ed, is the mobile phone.
The aspects of mobile phones that lead to this top ranking include ubiquity, portability, connectivity, and locus of control.

Critical challenges that they then identify include:
Teachers/lecturers not having the skills to make effective use of emergent technologies, much less teach students how to do so.
A research lag.
Lack of open broadband access.

At this point I would dearly love for any reader, philanthropist, parties with vested interest, or Santa Claus to financially support my PhD studies... a mobile phone, an iphone, and an internet service provider contract would assist me greatly in being a better teacher :) as well as supporting research in the impact that emergent technologies have on how care is communicated.

Adapting to change in institutionalised sectors is difficult. They tend to move slowly, despite the possibilities afforded. And its not only slow, its also resistant with bans on cell phones being prevalent. A trend more recently being reversed not because of learning applications but risk aversion with campus shootings a real concern. Actor-network thinking is useful because what keeps things in place as well as what reconfigures and stabilises gets to be considered. The parallel developments provide stability here. This and that strengthen each other. The actors in this network cohabit. The wherever and whenever affordances. Such changes seem unlikely to go away in the near future, they appear too useful.

A parallel 'emergent technology' development is 'the cloud'. The cloud refers to distributed data storage through to processing possibilities and applications ... for example Flikr, youtube, slideshare, and blogger 'live' entirely in the cloud. Such applications are not situated in any one space. Networkings hold the knowledge and to the end user the cloud is invisible. Such accessibility to data and to applications makes the mobile phone with internet connectivity an even more desirable commodity as content is easily sharable, easily distributed as well as easy to collaborate on.

These changes are important, the portability and access are changing how we relate to data as well as to each other. The actors are themselves reconfigured along with their technologies. Hence the need for further study...hence the PhD...

Moral hazards and what ingenious kiwis do with number 8 wire

Photo attribution to Brewbooks for this photo of a bra on a barbed wire fence in New Zealand. I trust no-one got hurt in the making/taking of the photo.

Moral hazards are a bit like climbing barbed wire; there's purpose and there's risk and some of the risks are anticipated (can see the barbs) and some are not; there's a tension in the wire as it's pulled down to climb over. This (almost) without fail comes back and bites you as you let go... and then there's what's in the paddock once you get there...but also what's in the paddock you were leaving...
And even further effects coz here I'm writing as a New Zealander and its amazing what we can do with number 8 fencing wire... even philosophize!

Thanks for the prompt form Keith Lyons on moral hazards, I found myself exploring wikipedia and then trying to edit wikipedia and then discovered further hazards... the process is so convoluted that wikipedias story of unintended consequence was unable to be changed by me.
I wanted to enter into the discussion. To me the defined concept of moral hazard was a bit one sided. A top down bias where underlings did not fully disclose to the upperlings. And where there seemed to be a deliberate intent to deceive. And i just wanted to add a prompt to the discussion on the page regarding unintended consequences for the page editors to consider a link to
Sproull, L., & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections. New ways of working in the networked organization. Cambridge: MIT Press.
But there were no links on wiki to second level effects or to these authors, and by the time i wrote in my bit on a wiki discussion page and checked i'd done the right thing twice over, my scribblings got scrambled. So I'm blogging instead. Such are moral hazards also. Unintended sequalae when the process gets too hard.

Sproull and Kiesler make 4 points:
1. the full possibilities of a new technology are hard to see, likely to emphasize planned uses and underestimate the 2nd level effects.
2. unanticipated consequences usually have less to do with efficiency effects and more to do with changing interpersonal interactions, ideas about what is important...social organization. This may change how each of us works and even the work we do.
3. these 2nd level effects emerge somewhat more slowly as people renegotiate changed patterns of behaviour and thinking.
4. 2nd level effects are not caused by technology operating autonomously on passive organisation or a society. Instead they are constructed as technology interacts with, shapes, and is shaped by the social and policy environment.

In looking at the moral hazard of using technologies for learning or for counselling that do or dont add substance, its worth considering what technologies are. Here I take a broad understanding on technology as defined by Ursula Franklin as 'the way we do things round here' (Ursula Franklin).
I then take a comment made by Jenny Mackness post on social networking and how come some people are getting something out of facebook or twitter when in her argument these are not communities of practice.
"Etienne Wenger has explained all this for us in his work on communities of practice. A community of practice needs the type of commitment that Facebook and other social networks of this type cannot give us. In addition social networks of the Facebook type don’t gather round a clearly identified domain and there is no requirement to share practice."

And I disagree, levels of committment are in the eye of the beholder.
Its working for some, to the level some want, and sometimes there might be a lot of highly visible to'ing and thro'ing and sometimes not. And sometimes the point is the connection, whats felt maybe, rather than whats visible. And this fits with a definition of community where community is based on value rather than on materially defined factors and for which further argument can be found in reading Raymond Williams. (Or in my own masters thesis, a philosophical analysis of community care, Auckland University)

Committment is never a stable entity, it fluctuates, and therefore so do communities of practice. Sometimes they work as communities of practice, and sometimes they dont. Sometimes they do for some of the people involved and not for others. The stability issue suggests there is value in a network way of looking, as afforded by actor-network theory. This encourages the discussion to broaden into what holds this thing called a community of prectice in place and whats pulling it apart. The tensions. And in using ANT there's also the added bonus in that the things to be looked at, the actors to investigate, can be human and otherwise.

This is part of the political environment. Whats in/out, whats considered and whats not, and even that some subjects are considered at all.
And the morality of this, and the hazards of this, are integral.

And so to in the research of such things there are further hazards. Moral hazards of invisibility like barbed wire in sand or in surf. Whats foreseen and whats not. Multilayered performances.
And in my own small way, I attempt to do more good than harm.

Ascilite08 paper; Cn I jus txt, coz I don wan 2b heard

I've attached the paper I gave at Ascilite08 here; its a taster of what I've been studying. In retrospect i attempted to cover too much :)
Haxell, A. (2008). Cn I jus txt, coz I don wan 2b heard: Mobile technologies and youth counseling. In Hello! Where are you in the landscape of educational technology? Proceedings ascilite Melbourne 2008. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/melbourne08/procs/haxell.pdf

iwant an iphone, igot iphoney

The simulated iphone is unfortunately as good as it gets with no contract, no purchase, gift or other means of acquisition. The keypad is not touch sensitive, the camera doesnt work, no music capacity, nor any downloadable applications such as navman. The phone doesnt work either - not for talking and not for text, sadly not even to simulate txt.
Its a bit "all fur coat and no knickers" as my granny would say.
However I can at least see what my webpage looks like on it :)

ascilite presentation and the joys of text

I have an unwarranted level of anxiety on getting this conference presentation for #Ascilite08 to work. Being cyborg is not growing on me, working with my mac i still find platform interchange difficulties annoying and untrustworthy, my flashdrive asks if i want to reformat it before it will open on a pc and i am unsure if that will wipe it or render it unfir for a mac... so have sent it to myself by email, but then unsure with latest update of aut groupwise how to get into this from outside aut.... and so have loaded it in to slideshare which on the 3rd attempt worked. The medium has altered the message a little, loss of one tiny graphic and loss of selected fonts, but its still got me to go with it :)
cant i jus txt

ailsa haxell can i jus txt

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Ripples of change; Domesticated bliss and how Sony got a new home for christmas

My Sony Erikson mobile was a gift, but I had to get a sim card and establish a contract with a service provider, take it home, plug it in, charge it… Wait…Read the manual. Personalise it; set the language (English and predictive test) enter the ph. no.s I wanted (I’ve outsourced my memory). Send a message to all my family & friends so they know my no., set the calendar, clock, choose the background, select preferred ring-tone and volume. Reply to half the friends and relations. Set the alarm clock. Put in appointments. Phew. Work the camera, store the photos, learn how to send photos, and bluetooth (???) them to my computer…Read the manual online….Check with service provider online about overseas roaming to send or call from Aus to NZ on a NZ ph., learn to check for service provider coverage, remember to keep it with me or risk my relationship, check for missed calls for the same reason. Get conscious of costs and keep feeding it with top ups by prepay and ensure its power supply is maintained. Learn to clear messages sent and received b4 it tells me 'memory too full' and won't oblige. Transfuse it by credit card when traveling. Check the bank balance. I still don’t know how to use it for email or internet, play games, download music, pay for parking, check movies … it’s already old technology and I haven’t yet learned all its functions.
I’ve had pets that are less demanding. Well at least the tamagotchi and the goldfish... and the cats.
Oh… sudden flash of enlightenment; I’m the one being domesticated!

Thankyou Bruno Latour for addressing the second source of uncertainty;
actions are 'other'taken.
And thanks also to Annemarie Mol in "I eat an apple" and telling the story of grasses.

Reassembling the social, when is a group not a group...

The litmus test of an Actor-network study according to Bruno Latour (2005) in Reassembling the social, is that it attends to what makes up events. This includes both human actors and otherwise, as well as explaining and demonstrating the assemblages that sustain or change.

Such exploration ‘feeds off controversies’. The controversies include the difficulties of a counselling message being not only constructed in 160 characters or less but also in considering whether such an interaction is of therapeutic value or not. At present we do not know; there is no evidence base for the practices which are evolving.

In learning to feed off the controversy I revisited Latour. My study had identified groups to study. The ethics applications require a stating in advance of who and what might be involved, a naming of ‘groups’. What I am now considering is whether the groups I pre-identified exist. I have found myself explaining an opening I have kept in case more participants come forward. In describing where I am up to for funding grants or in presenting initial findings, I am asked where I am up to in my study, and I am not quite sure. I think actor-network as a research approach jars against such arbitrary constraints. I answer that I am at the end of my data collect . Knowing that I also hold a space open for what other change may evolve, what other artefacts emerge or if any more young people come forward. I had been thinking the limited data from this group might be to do access or trust r consent issues. Now I’m wondering if I wrongly assumed the groups existence. In saying this I am not saying that young people don’t use the service, the service is clearly used, that artefacts clearly support this. What I am reconsidering is my assumption that they are a group.

Latour suggests that such preconceptions might require revisiting. It seems obvious in retrospect, however I find myself having an ahah moment. The young people I named as a group in my ethics application never meet, never coalesce, never talk with each other. I’m not even sure that they are young! All I know is they are identified as being a group by those who provide a service. A group defined by their absence, defined by being external. Taking a performative definition, this group comprises those who use or could use, or might use, the service. ‘They’, are ‘other’.

The work of making, and remaking this group, is actively constructed not from within the group but externally for the most part.
Further controversy feeds this study; I provide opportunity for the data to speak, voicing presence when presence wasn’t wanted. The texts received talk of how hard involvement is and talk of concerns for privacy. I am aware of a tension in making the invisible visible.

Opportunities and Resistence CCK08

I am surprised by some of the ironies involved in the approach taken to connectivism and learning in the CCK08 course.
First jolt was a separation of those doing it for credit from those not. A two tiered system became established and no one commented negatively on this?
Then there was a philosophical intent of learning being because you want it to happen, but there's still a timeline and a curriculum of sorts. Admittedly, not doing it for credit means i dont give a damn beyond the fact that some level of social organisation is needed to make it possible to even bump into the people one might want to dialogue with. So serendipitous and individual learning benefits from at least some structural supports.
There was also a tendency to maintain one's own silos. Maybe an activity to deliberately select and cross from areas of habit would have helped here. I might have been enticed into 2nd life beyond the arrival space ... i might have been required to intersect this with that in terms of identifying a new area with one i had previously explored. I did this anyway, placing ANT (Actor-network theory) alongside connectivism, but will connectivism start having a look at ANT?

Nonetheless, I took opportunities to go where i hadnt before...and enjoyed the banter of connecting with dead people, as well as finding real live people who could expand on my own thinking of the intersect between ANT and connectivism. People such as Keith Lyons with a delightful treatise on wayfinding and both Roy Williams and Frances Bell brought a curiosity to ideas and applications I shared.

But the question i find most curious, is well addressed inside of ANT.
"Why is it so difficult to change the practice of education? What kinds of opportunities can we embrace if we are able to make fundamental and systemic changes?" For this is where ANT is most useful. For a formal read I recommend reading Latour on Reassembling the social." For a quirky approach, try Latour's Aramis. Not explicit about education but a great study in change, resistence, resilience...
If making the intersections in networking the ideas is in the too hard basket, take a more direct route, have a look at Bigum, C., & Rowan, L. (2004). Flexible learning in teaching education: myths, muddles and models. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 32(3), 213-226.
It is the network, the connections in place that sustains, and this also points to what might be altered. For it might always be otherwise, what's configured always takes work in being held the same and is always subject, at least potentially, to being reconfigured differently.

As Chris and Leonie say in the paper,

This matters because how we frame our work matters...as patterns are laid down, grooves formed, a kind of template is created which also limits, proscribes, {contains, constrains, constructs} what can come next...we need to be aware of how particular performances of flexibility close down what is possible, rather than the rhetoric suggesting an opening up ....
If we have a technology, a way of doing things, which is, in crude terms, an assemblage of people and things, then to justify replacing or adding to this existing way of doing things, a claim has to be made that things will be done better, faster, more efficiently and so on with the implementation of the new.
This is what Lee Sproull and Sarah Kiesler (1991) identified in their studies of communication technologies and named ‘first level effects’—‘the planned efficiency gains or productivity gains that justify an investment in the new (1991, p. 4). However, as they go on to argue, the only certain outcome of implementing a new technology is that things change: ‘ …people pay attention to different things, have contact with different people, and depend on one another differently’.

In telling of experiences and sharing ideas about how teaching and learning might be shaped, we too are shaped.

Being in the belly of the monster

I am consumed.
I have been reading Donna Haraway at the same time as my computer has decided to take me inside of itself. I never wanted to enter in to its inner workings. That's why I use a mac. But with a noticeable slowing of processes I have forced myself to clean up the desktop, declutter, virus check, and purge at least half the cookies. However these activities have still not had a significant effect on internal workings or external connections.
I suspect i will have to wait for the stars to be back in alignment.
Meantime I have a rash in the form of a white stripe on my blog that would require significant dosing in html code to cure. A risk that could wipe out my blogs existence...
And today my significantly sized PhD library in endnote X has developed what seems to be a neurological disability where synapses do not want to connect. The folder of files is there, the attachment icon for each article dutifully displays but inside of each entry the icon of the image has gone invisible and inaccessible.
Is there a prozac like application providing for reuptake opportunities for endnote?

On the way I lost it

I arrived in Melbourne at a reasonable hour. I politely waited telling hte elderly woman I had sat with that I was not in a hurry, that waiting for a wheelchair though a nuisance for her was not a problem to me.
I understood it took a while to get luggage offloaded. I took my time. I allowed myself politely to be immobilised in my window seat and only considered my need for a loo for the last 3/4 hour of the flight, and the 15 minute delay in getting a wheelchir.
And then I waited at a luggage carousel. The wrong one as it turned out before catching the audio system advising fina passengers of where they might pick up luggage for my flight.
And by then it was so easy then to see my luggage was not there.
Bother, damn and several more expletives.
What is it with a system that lets anyone pick up a bag and no checks?
Its a cool bag. Black of course. This helps with its coolness factor, and its slimming, must therefore be lighter...
Yeah right.
Faint check. So chic. so like another bag that wasnt mine. So I wait for Emirates to try to locate the Elizabeth with baggage that is tres chic also. But shes obviously cleared customs and the airport, despite not knowing how to fill in an address or contact details on a luggage label.
And then I start remembering whats in the bag.
All my PhD interview notes. Ok, but the interviews are on my ipod. But my ipod is in the bag...
I struggle not to get overly distressed after all the interviews are also on my laptop which is with me :) as is my conference paper, and I also have this on email so its not the end of the word. Yet. Guess where the charger is...
Knickers.
None with me, nor meds... clothes, jewels.
I remember Artichokes story of being caught without a change of clothes. At least i have several days i can shop b4 presenting at a conference.
Artichoke sounded so together.
I wasnt. By the third customs person to comment on my lack of luggage I lost it.
2nd lesson of the night: do not swear at customs officials. They do not like it.
They also dont take well to suggestions.
My passport photo while beautiful, looks nothing like me....
Eventually on to a bus to Southern Cross station... I arrive and let my friend know I'm there and await a pick up. Spencer street was soooo quiet one or two cars only. But Sue texts me saying me she was struggling with traffic. I patiently wait thinking I'm at the bottom of town and its quieter than a Saturday night in Auckland.
Eventually it dawns to Sue, the jammed traffic is because the street is closed.
Midnight here is 2.00 in the morning at home, I might be studying for a PhD but the common sense quotient is seriously lacking.

2b avoid(ant) or in the belly of the monster

A curious feature of Annemarie Mol's writing is that she does not use the language of ANT (Actor-network theory). She does not refer to actors/actants with or without the hyphen to networks. Material semiotics are used but not named.
Does this make her any less an ANT author?
In Ant(icipating) some discussion I'd be interested in any readers of her latest book The logic of care commenting on what makes this more or less informed by ANT.
Some unantlike contentions are noted:
Mol sets out to articulate a logic of care with the intent to improve health care.
She also distills stories rather than sketching a faithful representation.

As Woolgar et al discuss in A turn to ontology in STS, and in paraphrasing responses from John Law and Annemarie Mol:
Ontology has implications for for more or less preferred courses of actions.
At hte same time, there is no place from which to make a stable decision about what matters. We are all as Haraway reminds us, in the belly of the monster.
In performing our own practices, we too are in the belly of the monster, there isnt an outside; we arent innocent. We are caught up and done in a web of relations. This means that our doings are themselves in one way or another consequential. It materialises, it matters. It is after all where we are and what we do and how we make our differences.

And as Annemarie Mol responded, what happens is a shift from the question how do people know disease, into how do they/we live with it.
Maybe substituting disease for research would also be useful?

My mobile killed my....

Following two days of wired stories on cellphone, five gadgets the cell phone killed, then seven more... Here is my list:
alarm clock, wristwatch, calculator, locator, phonebook, the memory part of my brain that kept phone numbers, camera, torch ...the space in my kitchen drawer where old gadgets go to die...

The quality of music means it hasnt killed my ipod/mp3player player yet, nor that it records interviews of sufficient duration for my studies, but thats coz its not an iphone.
It hasnt meant the death of my landline yet either, but I dont know why. Stuck in a timewarp i think.
It hasnt killed my book of maps, but thats only because its not an iphone with navman applications.

Please, before i let it consumes more of my world, can they make the font size bigger?