PhD writing as the art of the curve

An object, according to Graham Harman, is never fully met.
...A thing is never fully met.
What i meet is what firstly I recognise. It may well be more than what i recognise, it will be an assemblage, parts of which i become more and less acquainted with.
And, it only 'meets me' in terms of what it interacts with.

If i have a technology or a tool such as a hammer, says Latour (2002) citing Serres, my grasping the object is akin to grasping a 'garland in time'.
(Beautiful)
The 10 yr old oak of its handle, the minerals of antiquity, and the aggregation of all that made the making possibility.

Latour takes this a little further, for rather than talking of its instrumentality, or its substance he chooses to focus on its translation effects.
Technology as a detour, a journey, or with even more eloquence:
"technology is the art of the curve."

It's how a gets to b, a translation effect.
And as Latour says
"Why then do certain dominant Western traditions in spite of everything speak of technology as something that is amenable to mastery?"

And now I'm thinking...the PhD, its not a means nor an end and is not morally inherent or devoid, what it is is
"the art of a curve."

curvaceous!
:)

Ref
Latour, B. (2002). Morality and technology. The end of the means. Theory, Culture & Society, 19(5/6), 247–260.

philosophy as meditation

Some days enlightenment comes in profound realisations, some days it trickles in.
I know i had read it before, and heard it before, but it was not until hearing this in different combinations in the thinking of others (transported and translated by others) that it seems to have impacted on me, today, in a more fundamental way.

There is no transportation without translation.

In every shift something is altered.
For every thing being transported there is translation.
A thought goes from here to there, in the transportation there are shifts.
The actor carrying the message alters the message, the words, the inflections, the import....the medium itself becomes part of the message... the medium is the message

So the thing that moved from here to there is altered, but is it just the thing, or object and actor.
Contact is a two way force.

The thing is altered, when it goes from a to b there are new relations, the network alters.
The actor transporting the thing...is t too altered.

Seems reminiscent of a law of physics.
Metaphysics, ahah.
Change begets change; there is no difference that does not make a difference.
An ontological meditation.

And what lies beneath and beyond?
Graham Harman suggests "no two things ever really come in contact"
Object one and object two, barely collide and there are alterations. Like billiards colliding they touched, energies shift, the impact alters each object's trajectories, and at an infinitesimally small level even such objects are altered, and so is the surface that supports them... and so is the game...and the watchers...and so it goes on ad infinitum. For Harman it means that the two objects were simulacrums of themselves, different before, different after, only seen from one's own position? A multiplicity of realities that don't quite touch?

Talking this down to earth: getting grounded in some reality.
With txt counselling there is a message, if i say it or write it, the message differs. Just as a map is not the territory, a message conveying feelings and thoughts is still a symbolic representation of what can be expressed. In pushing a message out there is a construction what can be told. What can be told then moves from the person to a cellphone, whats written is not what is, but a rendition, a translation as it were.
This passes into the cell phone, the message shaped by what can be 'said' as well as shaped by button taps and eyes attentive (or not) to what is represented (altered by use of T9 or predictive text, or not) and combined with idiosyncratic variations of a language evolved by constraints on the size of sms (160 characters) and a playfulness used at the discretion of the 'speaker'. Then whether the message gets transported or not depends on the contract being paid, the cell phone coverage, the state of the battery , the size of the memory....

Similarly receipt depends on the receiver's contract, the bandwidth availability and frequency not overlapping, reception, and having a counselling centre staffed, and willing to use the sms medium. The capacity to make sense of the message as a literal translation and as an emotionally charged one, and to respond in a caring way reshaping whats known of counselling to be supportive, strengths based, affirming, acknowledging...

And of the message, how does it alter the intermediaries involved?
The cell phone may become a little more used, the memory a little more full, the bandwidth a little more congested, the account a little less full...the voluntary organisation as well as the sender become a little poorer, as txting costs...

But are there other layers as well?
In narrative therapies the telling of the story has its own healing potential. In other counselling traditions, including the client centred Rogerian method taught to this organisation's counsellors, catharsis is facilitated. Reflecting back the emotional content being synonymous with being heard and accepted. Then in psychoanalytic traditions there is the occurrence of transference and countertransference occurring as relationships have their own life.

People are changed in the act of communicating, and not just because their brain cells went through some chemistry in the process. The act of counselling occurs with the intent of a subjective and sometimes objective change of state. Beliefs get reshaped. Some of this might be anticipated, much is not.

In undertaking this task, whether considered as philosophy, meditation or research, the thoughts did not spontaneously combust. There was a transportation of ideas. The anthem site provided me with an audio recording of a reading group's discussion of Latour's reassembling the social. In following this discussion of intermediaries and actors, I found myself googling Latour intermediaries and translations since it appeared crucial to any shared understanding of Latour's basic terms. While there i noticed a reference again to Graham Harman and the new book on Latour being treated as/by a philosopher: Prince of networks, and in the absence of that book, which i had heard reference to and not seen, i found myself down yet another google rabbit hole chasing references to book reviews and discussions. The resultant journey around th, flattening the terrain as i seek to trace the connections through a blog by Harman and also Larval subjects.
As always in research, the ideas always evolve, I think my thinking is my own but its also coloured by where I've been. All errors of understanding I cannot say are my own any more than i say that what i learned can be attributed elsewhere.
All is transported and therefore, translated.

Gladwell an unwitting proponent of actor-network theory?

Outliers: The Story of Success by Gladwell could have been the story of actor network theory.
Rather than attributing individual accomplishment to accomplishing individuals, the network is identified as important (a not new phenomenon, but new in what seems to be a self help book).
He argues people with social advantages do better than people without social advantages, and so a wise thing for society to do would be to arrange for more advantages for more people. Focus on the network, again, seems to me an obvious solution given that's where the resources lie, however this has not been obvious to many.
Its the network and the interactions therein that creates the conditions for success, or its absence.

In a story where he does not, but could have looked at an actor network effect, he talks of the "Matthew Effect"(from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."
Gladwell reports the findings of Roger Barnsley, a Canadian psychologist, who noticed the birthdays of Canadian hockey players. Whether he looked at professional players or elite junior-leaguers: 40 percent were born in the first trimester of the year, and 30 percent were born between April and June.
An amazing coincidence or an underacknowledged actor in the form of policy and protocols?
The admission date for Canada's youth hockey league is January 1.
Pre-teen hockey players born January/February play hockey with kids as much as eleven months their juniors. The older players, generally more physically developed and skilled, get selected for all-star teams. "And what happens when a player gets chosen [for all-star teams]?" Gladwell asks. "He gets better coaching, and his teammates are better, and he plays fifty or seventy-five games a season instead of twenty games a season like those left behind."
Local context and networks matter.
Gladwell is pointing to the web of elements outside of people's individual control.
What Latour would have called the actor net work.

On being healthy enough to survive the health industry and educated enough to wonder about ignorance

The need for information literacy becomes more and more important when those with bias seemingly don't care that people live or die.

The specifics explained in the UK Guardian, of a real tragedy is that the cost of distorted information, and irrational prescribing, is far greater than the cost of the research that could prevent it.

In the cost of research it is worth considering that its been estimated it would take 700 hours a month to read the thousands of academic articles relevant to a GP prescribing; and so skimming and relying on summaries, becomes a norm.
When I next hear my health practitioner say "actually, I think I've seen at least two studies on that, and in different journals" I'm now a bit more skeptical, I'll take my own internet search on that thanks, and call you in the morning.

In being an academic I am now also questioning the huge pressure to publish, and to get funded...sounds different when its seen in light of how to get bought and influence people.

Have a look at friends-dont-let-friends-publish-in-elsevier

Refs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/09/bad-science-medical-journals-companies
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/05/11/friends-dont-let-friends-publish-in-elsevier-journals

same and different

Holding contradictions seems to be the norm for this week.
I had thought it difficult to get a handle on my data, I now know why.
The practices i observe feed off contradictions with a voracious appetite!
I observed the teaching of text counselling to counselling training facilitators last night.
I was told that the skills were the same and different.

absence with presence

The painting Study for Pipitea I by Gordon Walters (1979) (Fletcher collection http://www.fletchercollection.co.nz/terms.php) with its black and white complexity, is presented as symbolic of convoluted and complicated relationships and identities.
I look at the things i set out to see, and find instead a recurring theme of absence. In the absence I also find presence.

And sadly the rules of Fletchers collection site state forbid linkins to the site being made without written permission, so i have not. I note that I am allowed to print and use for non commercial purposes...another example of presence and absence.

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.

allegory in research; the presence of absence

Mostimes its presence that's studied.
So much easier when there's something to explain, it takes a bit more imagination to look at what's not there.
An object on a stark background or the inverse?

I look at the things i set out to see, and find instead a recurring theme of absence.
In looking at whats changing there's a sense of the unknown, of changes yet to be seen, of secondary changes unrecognised.
And then there's finding voice of participants within inaudible and invisible relationships.
And where the working space constrains interactions to 160 characters or less. When so little is available, working with unknowns is the norm.
There's also the instability of funding and of connections … of strangers ... of acts of hope and faith that someone/s will be there, available, helpful.
In addition there are connection drop offs with the major telecos blaming each other for interference resulting in connections lost.
Plus there's the work required to establish and maintain the means through which messages are conveyed, these include prepay or contract being established and maintained, the ph being charged, the cell ph coverage being in range, the number being known...and the service being associated with positives when it is usually negatives that provide the impetus to call...
And that the service has funding to deliver, even when funding can be contingent on the fickleness of nz weather and appeals dependent on selling the attractiveness of services.
There's vulnerability through and through and yet philosophically the organisation makes use of what they name is a strengths based model.

Despite the contingent types of relationships such vulnerabilities create, there is no sense of a grasping at straws.
The service remains; adaptive, resilient, present.

There's something here about being vulnerable and strong, like the bush pumps, adaptability lends itself to resilience.
There's also something about being strong and soft, fostering independence whilst being dependable; the brick mother.
There's also the inaudible with voice, and invisible with presence.
Less is more; the requirement to be succinct also creates the conditions for being direct.

And I'm reminded also that attending to whats on the margins, moves things more centrally;
creating greater solidity and durability of something ephemeral.

As I was walking up the stairs
I met a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today,
I wish that man would go away.

adapted from "Antigonish" William Hughes Mearns (1899).

Picturing the PhD

It follows that making a picture inevitably frames an event and the frame, which the resulting picture encodes, guarantees that it will attract the attention of a viewer for at least a split second. The picture maker, therefore, is first of all a viewer. She frames the picture by her own act of looking and her motivation to realize the event often involves finding more and more to interest her in the scene. We are able to align ourselves to the picture and the events it depicts because, in a very real sense, someone else—the picture maker—was aligned to the scene when she made the picture.

John Grady (2008) in Visual Research at the Crossroads Vol9;3 FQS Forum Qualitative Social Research.
Seems to me that the life of text messaging is also only really appreciated on the small screen, I could spend a lot of words describing the constraints, the imagery still does it with different impact. Debates might continue on the merit of picture vs prose and of whether a picture is truth or just one rendition thereof...and that how it might be interpreted is also subject to the eye of the beholder....none the less, with ANT the environment is a valid field of study as it shapes the performance.
There are at least 2 levels to consider- that texting is shaped by constraints
and that a phd with pictures is also a performance shaped by context.
I'm planning on putting images in the PhD, will just need to provide persuasive rationale on their validity.

In another article Giolo Fele (2008) using images in qualitative research provides an example of emergency service use contrarting the audio with the visual, demonstrating the intense coordination of work requiredshows that

a dispatch does not consist purely in information transfer, but is the outcome of intense coordination work among the actors involved face to face and through technological media.

.
This is the stuff i too am finding. I've really got to get stuff out there, seems i keep tripping over my own thoughts before i have them!

Now i have a whole new field of reading for me to catch up on Visual methods research interest.

Having a txt life, and being a txt worker

Being without a social life as a part time PhD student, FT academic, and most time human being, I was enticed into a conversation with an elderly article (its all relative but in communication studies 1996 was a long time ago).
The social life of documents by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid had me considering how such a document might now be written upon; writing in the margins superseded through hyperlinked blog.
Their article predates blogs, wikis, wikipedia, text messaging, twitter yet still carries a knowing wisdom;
fixity is not as limiting as might be thought. The document, they note, changes by virtue of staying the same. This paradox draws attention to interactions between fixed documents and flexible social practices.

There is a lot worth commenting on here, and which deserves better treatment than i will be giving it. However, my task is not to write or right the world but to get a phd done, so I try not to structure, edit or wordsmith it (much), and I'm just going to blog; an al2gether more liber8ing way 2 live with txt :)

I was pulled into this acquaintance via another blogger, google alerts told me of someone in the blogosphere writing of Bruno Latour, so I tripped upon this article and was brought up by the reference to 'qualifiers in writing.' What delineations are made as to what's in and what's out. One of my earlier phd writing forums had required me to consider such qualifiers for placing ones work in the world, and this one's hard to beat:

Art and eternity are beyond the scope of this essay.

And so enticed with such frivolity I was enticed into a really good read.
In its entirety, the qualifier, which btw comes near the end of the essay, states:
Art and eternity are beyond the scope of this essay. Nonetheless, the idea of an interchange between the immutable and the transient, the fixed and the fleeting seems central to understanding documents and their many uses.

The article begins with the exaggerated rumours of death; what lives or dies when a new technology is born.
Documents as darts brought made the transport notion of documents more lively. Important here, these writers claim, is that the conduit notion of message bearer fails to observe that what is observed as written typology also underwrites social relationships; that text becomes evidence of performed social interaction, a way of being with others. The article draws in both Bruno Latour and Anslem Strauss in support of the idea that documentation is so much more than type on a page, that it also is community, if not social world building.
(And this is where life is surely breathed in; for i think- and yes there it is, another of my fav authors Susan Leigh Star links to Anslem, and a colleague Antoinette via Anslem & Glasser...and so the social wold is made smaller, a bit more of a community is built).

Brown and Duigan also point to the community and nation building quality of documents, such as with establishing treaties which they see as being as much about the words on the page as about meeting. A sense of community is built through circulation, where documentation creates the audience for community to occur.
Similarly here, I make the claim that txt is more than an immediate message of pixels on a screen, even without consideration for the content of the message; it is a catalyst for, and evidence of, connection and of engagement.
The life of the message goes on, there's an ephemeral quality where even in the absence of the message, there is memory of its existence.

Txt provides a context for finding meaning.
This can be manipulated further in text messaging for counselling. As much as there is a lot of press on text bullying, and that erasing the message does not 'make it go away' so too is there possibility for affirming messages where a counselling centre can also counter such messages, acknowledging difficulties, affirming actions taken, demonstrating empathy of it being tough, and reinforcing strengths the person has in seeking assistance. The anywhere anytime nature of the message carrier, a cell phone, supports choice for maintaining affirmative messages, allowing for a tangible positive message that transcends time. There is potential through text to connect with supportive counsellors and agencies such as Youthline for assistance, and through this connection to be aligning more strongly with one's inner strengths. The cell phone becomes the conduit in assembling and strengthening both interpersonal and intrapersonal relating.
Being txtually active is undoubtedly linked with both positive and negative possibilities, and neither outcome is inevitable. Given that having a txt life is a wide spread activity, then its more useful to think of such technology as enabling and to actively foster the conditions supporting positive outcomes. Such work is not determined by the technology itself but by those who invest creatively, negotiating and working the medium for connecting with young people in the places of their choosing.

mobile duplicity

NZers are 108% saturated. Its not that we're wet, its that we are a canny bunch (apparently).

NZ Herald Thursday April 16, 2009

If you lined up 100 New Zealanders, then emptied their pockets and purses, you'd retrieve 108 mobile phones. The fact that there are more active cellphones than people in this country is not a sign that we're a nation obsessed with mobile communication technology.

For those who have more phones than cents its the answer to high calling costs which cross across service providers. The fees competing telcos charge each other for passing on calls made to the other's network currently stands at 15c per minute.

The answer (apparently) is its cheaper to have two phones on two service providers, use one for calls to telecom users and the other for calls to vodafone users.

In response to threats of Government interventions, Telecom and Vodafone have proposed reducing termination rates gradually between now and 2014 to 10c and 11c respectively. The Commerce Commission preliminary view is that the proposed cuts do not go far enough.

The Telecommunications Users Association (Tuanz) agreed, saying someone making 10 minutes of calls to mobiles a day was currently paying $300 a year in excess charges, and would pay a total of $1300 in excess charges by the time the rates fell to the proposed 2014 levels.

Obviously, the answer is get another phone...its cheaper...and of course its a win win situation, making cell phones even more pervasive is their business afterall.

Witnessing 'withness'

Getting digital with counselling
Auckland Youthline is a youth counselling agency that has in recent times begun using digital formats such as sms messaging, email and social networking sites to provide avenues for counselling. The intent in transitioning to 'new' media is described by the CEO of this organisation as meeting with young people in the places they are in. It is this 'withness' I want to tell of.

There is 'withness' that involves the philsophical intent between agency and its members, being with is also a counselling inherent in the therapeutic relationship of counsellor and counsellee, there is also 'withness' of each of these parties with the instruments required in conveying a message. And 'withness involving the curious melding of old with new, getting 'with' the times. In this research such times are a changing with a counselling approach historically based within an oral tradition being melded into a digital text based one.

The underlying concept of withness is outlined by Nick Bingham (2009). He describes his interest as stemming from coexistence, ideas of being with. To engage with coexistence he described storied research from different domains: Technology where technological praxis involves coexistence of protocols; Ecology in species more classically involving social science in inter-ethnic notions of peaceful coexistence. His own research is of GM in agriculture that explores the ways in which legislative and practices make it possible for GM and non-GM coexistence without contamination. Interrogating the practices of these domains, he argues, involves getting to grips with the specificity of the domains and of 'withness'.

In looking at change, the concept of 'withness' is somewhat neglected. The literature such as that of E M Rogers in Diffusion of Innovation explores newness by focusing on the something old as superceded, but whats brought forward, transitioned with, may also be worth exploring. People come with their memories of what was, they do not leave these at the door as it were.

I'll hold this thought for a while, the exploration and performance of withness...

specifics as species creation

Nick Bingham lost me a bit when discussing specificity to do with creating species. He was talking GM and non GM so species creation is central to his thinking. But i took him to be taking this broadly and think he was eluding to the production of species as an outcome of specificity. Taking this a step further and exploring spatial identities; identities as produced within specific spaces/places was provoked by reading a book review by Cristina Ros i Solé of Discourse and identity, by Bethan Benwell and Elisabeth Stokoe (2006). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

This book discusses spatial identities, both as they are produced and as they are located in discourse. In undertaking this, the authors identify a ‘spatial turn’ in discourse, one which regards space as dynamically produced and as part and parcel
of social processes. They argue that ‘physical space is not an objective, neutral phenomenon but is inescapably socially constructed by human agents and their semiotic practices’(p. 208). What I find of value here, is not the discourse as much as the descriptions; identity being produced as a function of where we are, have been and/or are going. That spaces do not contain people but create them.

- a very ANT way of thinking.

The path less travelled

How my writing is informed by materiality and specificity.
In line with Nick Binghams exploration of this subject, I now have another way of conceptualising change in terms of how this and that get together, coexist and shape each other/or not. He explores the ideas of being together; of 'withness'. His own topic area involves GM and non-GM (as well as the presumptions that these might be able to co-exist). In this he describes the need for specifics, that the general is only known by the particular, and his approach (informed by ANT) he describes nicely as 'interrogating the parts'.

I like this turn of phrase. I have attempted to interrogate the peoples involved (counsellors, counsalees, and the techy peoples, as well as those with non voice carriers; the mobile phones, the computer software and hardware, as well as the artefacts of policy.
Nick Bingham also discusses the specfics in terms of how far from a source a thing might travel.
In change theory. or at least in innovation diffussion theory, the fragility of a thing and the bumpiness of the ride is given insufficient cognizance.
A 'general' cant be rolled out just anywhere...the particularities are important; the rolling out from general to local or from local to global is a questionable practice. Such paths are not given, but require work.
The mapping of such paths, with attendance to the minutae of detail fits well with the close to the ground ANT traveller.

ontological politics and multiple realities

Establishing a talking familiarity with the jargon.

Annemarie Mol(in Actor Network Theory and After, 1999, pages 74-75) describes
"Ontological politics as a composite term. It talks of ontology - which in standard philosophical parlance defines what belongs to the real, the conditions of possibility we live with. If the term ontology is defined with that of politics, then this suggests that the conditions of possibility are not given. That reality does not precede the mundane practices in which we interact with it, but is rather shaped within these practices."
and that the term politics refers to this shaping.

The politics then of 'whats real'.
And of what 'reals' are enacted.
It is this second question that opens the discussion to consider the multiple realities that are being enacted, concurrently.

An incomplete work; a workstory of researcher responsibility

Enacting relations of responsibility in research;
Youth counselling as a case in point.

Introduction
The development of communication and computer technologies allows for significant alterations to develop in the ways counselling can be offered. Whether such alterations are a ‘good’ or bad’ thing is an unknown, it's a bit like saying conversations are good or bad, or talking loudly, softly, face to face or at a distance... Logic suggests that each of these aspects is going to be met by a response of ‘it depends’. Consideration then of the factors creating the conditions of goodness or badness is therefore required. One consideration is for services provided to be responsive to the needs of the group that the service purports to serve. Responding to this mandate would involve hearing the voices of those using the service and articulating what is valued. Given that this process involves a relationship developed in confidence, involving privacy and sensitivity to the intimate nature of issues discussed, creates a point of tension balanced alongside a need to provide a research basis for practices hitherto unknown. In this paper, the enactment of such research is reflected upon with the foremost issue being one of researcher responsibilities.

This paper on the enactment of responsible research is situated within a wider PhD study on change and the use of emergent technologies within a youth counselling centre. This paper focuses on a key issues of responsibility associated with the ethics of studying what is usually kept underwraps; uncovering and making visible personally intimate details of distress and of counseling received. There are concerns for the privacy of those involved. There are also concerns for the validity of new practices and the maintenance of a service that aspires to ‘do good’ and to ‘do no harm’. The absence of an evidence base for practice is also of concern. In addition, there are tensions involved in sensitive research that may privilege some whilst silencing others. In line with the work of Dianne Mulcahy (2007) this involves a focus on empirical performative responsibility extending beyond the presentation of perspectives; an exploration of the ontological politics involved in having voice, and in ‘giving’ voice.

A story of change.
This is not a story for idle spectators. I do not want this to be read voyeuristically. I do not write that you might be entertained. My intent is for change. The issues addressed lie deep in the folds of the moral fabric of society; How do we treat people who are smaller, have limited practice in decision making, have little purchasing power, and have limited voice in the world? The very measures set up to protect simultaneously create conditions of disempowerment.

In the act of researching and writing such wrongs might also be redressed. What I write, is written with intent. The written artefact becomes an actor, not merely a story, but a technosocial actant that pushes and pulls. Tugging at heart strings, and through these to the people and the structures that maintain a status quo, to be a persuasive influence on the undertaking of research into things that are also sensitive.

What are the currently established stories?
The artefacts of policy are written by providers…


This incomplete workstory of change provides me a prompt for considering sensitive research as well as researcher responsibility, an ontological dance inside of my doctoral studies.

Imagining in the forest dark

A timely read from Cynthia Tananis.
As I write, so am i (re)written.
Where i was coming unstuck in my writing was in the ontics of researcher responsibility, and it may just be that i need to travel further through such woods/words rather than avoid them.

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 :)