Izea Blog Makeover!

The good folks at Izea are running a Blog Makeover Contest which I'm entering to win with this blog entry. I've never done a post related to a commercial product/organization before but in this case, they are a great company and this is a wonderful opportunity I can't pass up.

This blog, Spiral Scratch, is overdue for a makeover by a graphic designer. I created it over two years ago and it originally existed as a place where I could write during my frequent bouts of insomnia. So, the posts were personal, reflective and what you might expect from a sleep-deprived person...a tad inspiring but all over the map.

In the past six months, I've immersed myself in the world of social media and have really learned the amazing things that can be done with a blog, how they can become their own kind of forum, and I ache to move this blog from the personal & eccentric to the personal & professional.

I've begun this to a certain degree by changing the template from a beige, bookish, librarian model to one that is sleeker but I'd love to have a custom made logo and design even if that means I move my blog to another platform that would allow more customization.

I can't say I deserve this more than anyone else but I can say that the timing for a makeover of this blog couldn't be more perfect. The visual changes would be reflected in a refinement of content which would focus more on communication, social networking and the social impact of technology.

I've been debating for a while whether I should start a second blog but in this instance, I think a makeover, in style and content, might be a huge step forward that would benefit me and my small but growing readership.

To anyone who is curious, Spiral Scratch is a title of a song but 1970s/1980s band, The Buzzcocks, and refers to what a vinyl record essentially is...one very long spiral scratch. It was also the name of my first radio show. I'm hoping that a visual and content makeover would help me bridge the gap between old & new technology as we discuss how technology is affecting our culture in both large and subtle ways.

Thanks, Izea, for considering this entry!

Web 2.0 Expo NYC-orama!

I just went to my first tech conference, Web2.0 Expo NYC (as opposed to those in Berlin or San Francisco) put on by O'Reilly Media. I copied lots of notes, page after page, the old-fashioned way, but mainly noticed the many ways that tech conferences are different from academic conferences*.

I went to my first academic conference in 1990 and probably have attended somewhere between 30 and 40. It's one of the rare times I get to go anywhere, usually to a city I want to see or somewhere I've never been before. In the upcoming year, it's Chicago and SF. About every other year I'll participate by presenting some of my research.

So here are some differences:

COST
Tech: Expensive, anywhere from $1200-3000 dollars. I assume that is deducted as a business expense? Ouch! Includes lunch though!

Academic: Inexpensive for students, between $25-100 dollars (more for on-site registration) and students bitch about having to pay that much. Between $100-300 for senior scholars. No food included.

DRESS
Tech: Men: Casual, anti-suit atmosphere, jeans & sneakers, even t-shirts & shorts. Women: Whatever you feel like wearing that day.

Academic: Men: Wrinkled suits that they wore while they slept on the plane. Same suit every year. Women: Matched long flowing blouse & long skirt (think professional earth mother).

COMMUNICATION
Tech: A lot of people are continually connected to the internet via their laptops. The most crowded area of the conference was where people could recharge their computers. People were tweeting, checking email during presentation. Use of mobile phones only for texting.

Academic: Mostly one-on-one conversations in conference center hallways and hotel bars. Most people in sessions watch presenters or consult their enormous program books to see what they are going to attend next. Occasionally, you'll see someone on a cell phone outside a meeting room.

PRESENTATIONS
Tech: Every presenter talked, no notes, through a powerpoint presentation. Just one presenter or, rarely a panel of people just talking about their jobs or the industry. Fifty minute sessions.

Academic: Four to six people reading papers to a captive audience. Strict moderator watching clock and motioning speakers to wrap things up (everyone goes over their allotted time). Sessions last between 2 and 2 1/2 hours. Sometimes no time for Q&A.

PLENARY/KEYNOTE TALKS
Tech: Lots of keynote talkers, big names in their field but only give between 5 and 30 minutes to talk! That's barely enough time to present one idea...soundbites!

Academic: Just 2 or 3 one-hour plenary sessions by people you should know but never heard of which are preceded by terribly long introductions of the speakers and sometimes award ceremonies. Almost mandatory to attend but usually little more than paying homage to senior scholars.

EXHIBITION HALL
Tech: A fair number of exhibitors, often wearing color-coordinated clothing. Booth crawl one night featuring free alcohol. Sometimes there are booth girls wearing high heels, short skirts, often blond, who call out to attendees passing by to get their attention. Lots of promotional stuff (swag), games & giveaways to draw your attention to booth.

Academic: Many more exhibitors, book publishers who are indistinguishable from the conference attendees. You can't tell who is there to browse and who is there to sell books. You sometimes need to flag a book rep down to purchase books and everyone is buying books, sometimes hundreds (especially people from outside the U.S.). Nothing is free but there are often discounts for on-site purchases. It's like Christmas only you spend money on yourself.

EVENING EVENTS
Tech: A few night time events, hosted but more often cash bar, at a local nightclub or restaurant. People create their own after parties and some events are invitation only. People take lots of pictures of themselves and their friends in crazy poses and post them online.

Academic: Attendees go on a rotation of receptions between 7 and 11 pm hosted by a university or book publisher. Mostly free alcohol so more drinking involved than at tech conference (a surprise, no?). Those left standing at the end of an evening who don't have a 8 am panel scheduled the next morning gather in headquarter hotels for more drinking. There is a huge danger of embarrassing yourself in front of senior scholars. Luckily, no one is ever taking a picture of you.

EVALUATION OF CONFERENCE
Tech: Attendees asked to evaluate and "rate" each presenter whose session they attended. Ratings probably determine who gets asked again to present at future conferences.

Academic: Attendees asked about the logistics of the event (food, location, shuttle busses). Lousy presenters usually present every year, no compensation to those who suffered through their presentation on labor disputes among poultry workers. You try to remember the spectacular failures so you can avoid them in the future.

There were commonalities, too, but these are some of the things which stood out to me. Who knows, maybe next year, I'll get a media pass and blog the conference!

I had a really great time, learned a lot, hoped to share some of that in posts in next few weeks if they seem appropriate.

*Edit: I realized that I never defined "academic conference". I mean conferences or annual meetings of professional associations of academics (professors & graduate students), usually held between August and December. The groups focus on a discipline & mostly have three initials containing the letter "A"...AAA, ASA, AHA, AAR, APA, etc.

When those we like=those we are like

I've been reading a lot of blogs over the past month, probably too many blogs. In my Twitter escapades, I've been a hungry learner, clicking on links and following leads, trying to learn as much as I can about social media. I didn't wade into the shallow end, I dove off the high dive.

In many ways, I felt like Alice in Wonderland...I recognized the characters but it was a weird, upside down, cyberworld that seemed nonsensical to me almost all of the time. And, foolishly perhaps, I openly displayed my slack-jawed incomprehension, hoping to be pitied, tutored, and finally embraced by this colorful, dynamic world of buzzing social extroverts. Much of the time, I was positively dizzy by the pace of it all, as I watched lives being lived rush past me. Some days, I found it almost intoxicating.

In hindsight, I can see I was following an old pattern...when I get bored with my life or my work becomes too difficult or too tedious, I immerse myself in something new and feel the zest and excitement that one feels as a beginning student or as a traveler setting off on the first leg of a journey into an unfamiliar part of the world.

But while I am in in this world, I clearly am not of it. I don't work in technology, PR, marketing, or finance, I'm not a consultant, venture capitalist, or social media "guru", and I've felt this tension of being the outsider for as long as I been playing in this Twitter/Facebook land. I'm a terrible actor and so I've tried to embrace my outsider stance even during times where I was cast as a minor league pariah.

I clumsily stepped on toes, I questioned common wisdom, I scoffed at those higher up on the food chain than I am, partly out of ignorance but also because my values seem to differ so much from my online peers. I expressed bewilderment and sarcasm when I encountered statements, thoughts or feelings that made me incredulous: "Who ARE you? How can you claim THAT?? Isn't it dehumanizing to think of people as 'personal brands'?"

By and large, I was simply ignored, as a small child would be who interrupted their parents' dinner party. A few people welcomed me, if only for the novelty value of having a new face at the table, while others actively exiled me from their online family of friends and sent me to another room. And that's okay because, after all, we are really all strangers to one another online. No one "owes" me their friendship, it has to be freely given and I am sorry if I ever personally offended anyone.

I have only good feelings towards those I've interacted with in these social communities except the few who were confrontational, racist, sexist, or boorish. I've normally been treated with patient kindness even when I clearly didn't know a lot about what I was talking about and for that I am grateful.

But I'm also glad that I might have asked some uncomfortable questions or disturbed the clubhouse atmosphere of these cliquish communities. The majority of folks I met online were white, college educated, decently paid, spoke English as a first language, and were between the ages of 22 and 40 and, I have to say, many displayed a distinctly superior attitude, almost one of entitlement. I ran into very little social critique of the inequities of American society and our culture of leisure and consumption is positively reveled in. Even in my days working in the music industry, I never heard of people participating in this many parties! Even those people with families seem to travel and party a lot more than my offline friends and colleagues.

Of course, I'm a participant in all this activity even if I'm outside the dominant Twitter demographic. I brought up Iraq once, the indecent price of conference registrations several times, occasionally criticizing industries that think everything of worth can be measured, quantified, and ranked. And these comments feel FLAT so I got the message and kept my conversation personal (cats, weather, work, sleep, travel, family, etc.) instead of political.

In the end, a community is what it is and it is hard if not impossible for one individual to change the tenor of the discussion especially someone who is admittedly of very little influence. And I don't think it is my place to try to change something that is clearly so massively popular. But I do think it is my place to reflect upon my experience and see what was positive and what is lacking.

So while I might have fondness for the individuals I've encountered and I am completely in awe of their enthusiastic, almost mission-like ambition in their professions, I am unimpressed with the social networks that have emerged in this Web 2.0 world, at least the ones I have seen. In these circles, connections with like minds are made but isn't the point of all of this interdependent, global connectivity to interact with those who are different from ourselves, those who have different views on what's important in life, those from who we can learn something besides how to advance our career?

Instead, social networks seem to create niches where people who seem to have the same political and cultural values hang out together and empathize with each other's ups and downs. They are support groups more than change groups. There is a place for these types of friendships in all of our lives, lives where we are tired and bruised much of the time. I don't want to minimize this at all.

But at this point, I think that the excitement around social networks and the belief that they actually can lead to changes in our society is completely inaccurate and doesn't reflect their segregated nature. Maybe some time, down the road this could occur but not today and not tomorrow. The rule of like attracting like still remains a guiding principle of human behavior.

P.S. After rereading this I thought I should add that I hope to continue to Twitter away and participate on Facebook although maybe not at the same high, intense level as in recent weeks. And, if it still needs to be said, this post is meant to be a critique of the limitations of social networks, not of the individuals who compose them.

I hate cell phones!

AGGRAVATION: A condition of agitated annoyance, usually in response to negative stimuli.

Example of a situation provoking aggravation: Idiots who come into Starbucks and use it as an office without ever buying anything. They talk loud, oblivious to their surroundings, and are obnoxious and cheap. Their insensitivity has been known to lead to fellow patrons grabbing their cell phone out of their hand and throwing it into a frappacino blender, laughing maniacally while it is ground into small bits.

Situational conditions: Unfortunately, the Starbucks employees have been trained to ignore the behavior of people who come into their facility and disrupt the atmosphere even when they do not purchase any items sold in said business. They are not consumers or customers, they just exist to suck out all of the serenity that can exist in a coffeehouse and charge the environment with all of the negative stress of their workplace without actually spending any money or compensating fellow customers for having to put up with their insensitivity.

Toll: Minutes of my life I'll never get back, elevation of blood pressure, loss of concentration, and increasingly pessimistic view of the human condition.

Short-term solution: It is difficult to combat an obnoxiously loud talker. Cold stares do not work. Asking directly for someone to pipe down rarely succeeds in a satisfactory response. A nonviolent solution is made more difficult but the accommodating staff who shrug their shoulders and smile when you point out the obnoxious people who frequent such place, again, without every purchasing an item. Short of leaving the facility, I have found the only solution is to ask that the music volume be increased, use earplugs, and move to the table that is the farthest from the offensive person.

Long-term solution: Work on channeling aggressive impulses into work.

I now pronounce you Wife and Life Enhancement Device...

Just saw this news story that made my stomach turn:

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21271545/wid/11915829?GT1=10450

This "news" story is about a Ph.D. candidate (who else) in the Netherlands who does "work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it". His thesis is called "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners".

The story goes on as the researcher tries to convincingly argue that there is nothing wrong with these "intimate relationships". But how does a programmable machine give "consent" to sex or marriage? Robots do whatever they are programmed to. Artificial intelligence aside, in this generation we haven't created human-like machines that have independent will and volition. So, if you are going to consider a robot a "person" (and so far marriage and the majority of sex is between two adult people), unless a machine can say "no", isn't that rape?

This kind of thinking depersonalizes sex and intimate relationships and what is additionally appalling is that the researcher suggests that robot sex/marriage will decrease prostitution. Well, what is the creation of a robot that exists just for the purpose of easing one person's sexual urges? If you are going to consider a robot a "person" who can engage in a relationship, isn't this just an even more warped form of prostitution? I mean, this guy suggests that it is preferable to have sex with a thing, an object one can control, than an actual person with genuine and spontaneous feelings as well as their own needs. Sex and marriage are just about fulfilling one person's desires and treating the other party as a means to an end...if that is not prostitution, I'm not sure what is.

This isn't even just submission this is slavery. And what is most disturbing is that the Charles Choi, the reporter who wrote this piece, just gives the scholar free rein to make his argument without even bringing up the possibility that there is something wrong with this picture. He only questions whether society will "accept" a robot as a sexual/marriage partner not the effect this could have upon what we consider healthy human relationships. Society will accept a wide variety of things but that doesn't make them good. It is pretty spineless reporting to not even counter this controversial suggestion with the possibility that this proposal might not be the best thing for humanity and just encourages a self-centered narcissism.

Something is seriously wrong with a person when they can only intimately relate to objects and not other people. Along with that comes a lack of empathy and when people lack empathy (seeing life from another person's view), the downfall of humanity is not far behind. A lack of empathy is a common psychological diagnosis when doctors look at persistent antisocial behavior.

I'm not being speciescentric. It's just that in sex and marriage, robots are like children and animals in that they can not legally or morally consent to an act here. And if a robot could say, "No, thanks, I don't feel like sex right now", I think the entire motivation to have a sex robot slave would disappear.

By the way, I can rag on Ph.D. candidates because I am one myself and have been surrounded by other Ph.D. candidates for more years than I'm willing to admit. I'm not surprised a doctoral candidate came up with this theory (many lack basic social skills) but I'm astonished that a thesis committee would grant him a degree. I mean, this student gets his degree on October 11th and on October 12th there is a news story about his thesis? C'mon, he must have sent out his press release when he scheduled his defense and they held the story until he passed his defense. Not surprisingly low quality standards for Internet journalism but I hope if this story gets circulated in the respected media, I hope they will raise some questions and not just be a public forum for this man's warped views on healthy relationships.

The best thing about my friends is that they can tell me when I'm full of myself. They call me when I'm being self-centered, judgmental, insensitive. And I listen to them because they ARE my friends and they don't want me to look like or be an ass. I can't imagine some computer programmer is going to program a robot that will give it's "owner" a second look and say, "I think you're full of shit. And by the way, I'm going home with Ramon." When that day comes, maybe I'll rethink my stance on human-robot relationships.