Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Review of The Inner History of Devices
The Inner History of Devices by [sic] Sherry Turkle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This volume is edited and with an introduction by Sherry Turkle, and each chapter is written by someone else, so the “by” in the bibliographic data should really read “ed.”. Anyway.
This work examines people’s personal relationships with technology through three formats: memoir, ethnography, and case report. In each case, the point is to understand how the technology either builds or elides a sense of self. Not surprisingly, results show that participative environments help people to build a sense of self, though this is frequently pathological. In other cases, the technology masks people’s humanity, usually with deleterious effects; the chapters on addiction and disease are the most striking examples of this. In these cases, a life and death dependence on technology such as in the case of dialysis can quickly lead to despair or feeling like a cyborg. It seems to me that a frequent criticism of Sherry Turkle is that she tends to see the pathological in people’s relationships with technology. My personal view on the matter is that she might be right, though of course I don’t change my own behavior to account for it. But even when new social or learning spaces are created as technology advances, we have to recognize their limits. The chapter “Cyberplaces” by Kimberlyn Leary had the example that most resonated with me. Melissa has just discovered that her “knight” in a medieval online RPG is really a 15 year old boy. He insists nothing has changed about their relationship. Melissa feels differently.
Most clinicians would not fault Melissa’s comment for showing a lack of imagination but would find it a healthy adaptive response. She has come to an important realization, absent in much of the over-enthusiastic literature on cyberspace: the computer makes multiple selves possible–but only to a point. Melissa can live on the surface, but at a critical moment, the need for depth returns. (pp. 89-90)
I am sure we could all name a similar “critical moment” in our own lives.
Pages are now available on Google+
You’ll have noticed that all recent library conferences have had presentations on “Using Google+ in the Library” or similar, but they all were missing something. You could use Google+ as a librarian, but not as a library. As of yesterday, that’s changed.
I found some good step-by-step instructions here on how to make a page, or you can follow along on Google+ official help. I am still unclear on the advantages to a Local Page vs. a Company, Institution or Organization page. This seems to me very much like the old Facebook page vs. place argument. If they are exactly the same thing and you only have one location maybe you should make a Local Page rather than a non-profit or organization page. I made the decision to make an organization page, which hopefully wasn’t the wrong decision. (I actually did make a place page as well, just in case, but didn’t do anything with it yet). Facebook eventually made it possible to have both at the same time, so this might be coming soon.
There also is no info that I could find on how to add additional administrators, though I assume this is coming soon. I will add it to the library’s social media repertoire slowly, since not all our librarians are on Google+ anyway yet. We don’t get many reference questions over social media yet, but we do get a few and have a librarian assigned to monitor social media each day. I could see scenarios in the future where we had hangout office hours for distance or commuter students or really anyone who wanted to do a hangout, since that’s so easy in this platform. But that will have to wait until we get more people on board, and figure out if any of those constituents are even using Google+.
Update: Just a few pointers–this works the same way as Facebook, in which you have to have a personal account to create a page. But like Facebook, your personal page is completely separate. You either use Google+ as yourself, or the organization page. You also cannot follow anyone until they follow you, unlike Google+ for individuals.
AcBoWriMo: Academic Book Writing Month
I was just thinking yesterday about how something like NaNoWriMo was cool, but really not the writing I needed to be doing. (I routinely write the first chapter of a novel just to get it out of me. Chapter 2 usually proves to be more of a problem). Lo and behold, ProfHacker posted about Charlotte Frost’s idea to do AcBoWriMo, where you write an academic book in a month–with, of course, the caveat that academic writing is far different than novel writing. “[B]ut aren’t you just a little bit curious to know how much of a kick-start a dedicated writing month could give your book?” she asks.
So in the spirit of fun and GTD, I am going to give it a shot. Plus I just joined a faculty writing group at Dominican, so I am in the mindset of improving the volume and quality of my writing. I am thinking 500 words a day is totally doable, but to get to the full 50,000 words in a 30 day month requires 1,666 words a day. Considering that it’s already November 2, this may be challenging. Plus I don’t have any projects that require quite that length in the pipeline. I do have several shorter projects due in November, plus a number of longer projects partially completed. So rather than planning to “do things over winter break” (hahahahahhaha), it’s not a bad idea to just suffer through November and enjoy more of December for fun, as several people have pointed out.
In November I have 750 words worth of writing due to two different publications, a white paper that needs to happen soon, and two articles I would like to at least draft (both are outlined already). That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 words. Not to mention I could always blog more! So let’s say 20,000 words to be generous. That’s 666 words a day. I have written 600 words for a book review draft (it’s pretty rough yet), and this blog post will end up being about 400 words. So that’s 1,000 words. I feel like that’s cheating, but then again, it’s not nothing!
Anyone else participating in any of these “write such and such many words of…” memes? Do other people accomplish things in different ways? Or are writing groups the only way to do it?
Writing Progress Chart