Secret's out: I've been undercover. All through November, I've been participating in NaBloPoMo—without telling anybody! What's NaBloPoMo, you ask? Well, it's National Blog Posting Month, a sort of ugly stepsister to NaNoWriMo, i.e. National Novel Writing Month. And why didn't you tell anybody?
Well. Because I think the name is ridiculous.
But! 30 days, 30 posts—that's so much more frequent than once per week! One thing I've found is that the historian in me really has a field day with links. Links, you see, are very much like footnotes. And everyone knows how I feel about footnotes.
Also, I've learned that RSS feeds are basically amazing. When I used to trundle around the Internet, poking different websites to see if they were alive/had anything new or interesting to offer me, I felt kind of like the unpopular kid at the table. Like, I wanted to talk to everybody, but no one wanted to talk to me. Now, with RSS feeds, I have the luxury of choice. The posts come to me. They are all clamoring for my attention, wanting to be chosen, crying "me, me, pick me!" And there I sit, with that all-powerful "Mark All as Read" button, ready to dismiss them with a single click. Such power! Um...over information...? RSS feeds, by the way, are relevant because I basically have to read about 5 times as much as I did before, in order to still have something interesting to say. Not such a bad deal.
Anyway—thanks for seeing this experiment through, folks, even if you didn't know what you were getting into. Onward and upward!
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Digital Reluctants
The Kindle. What's it good for?
Amazon's new e-book reader is a bit of an enigma—a backwards object for a forwards time. About a week and a half ago, I wondered if it might not become successful as a bridge device for the digitally reluctant. Up at the Digital Natives blog today, Jesse has done an amazing job exploring the idea of "your parents' e-book," putting the Kindle into context.
I've been working as a book intern on the Digital Natives project this semester, and it's been fascinating to delve into this question about the generational/experiential divide between kids who were "born digital"—born into a world where interconnectedness is the norm—and their parents.
And parents, as Jesse points out, tend to like book-books. Not all parents, of course, but we're talking in comparison to a generation of kids who may be just fine cradling laptops on their knees, or snuggling under the covers with an iPod. I know I am. The question is: who's buying what Amazon's selling?
Amazon's new e-book reader is a bit of an enigma—a backwards object for a forwards time. About a week and a half ago, I wondered if it might not become successful as a bridge device for the digitally reluctant. Up at the Digital Natives blog today, Jesse has done an amazing job exploring the idea of "your parents' e-book," putting the Kindle into context.
I've been working as a book intern on the Digital Natives project this semester, and it's been fascinating to delve into this question about the generational/experiential divide between kids who were "born digital"—born into a world where interconnectedness is the norm—and their parents.
And parents, as Jesse points out, tend to like book-books. Not all parents, of course, but we're talking in comparison to a generation of kids who may be just fine cradling laptops on their knees, or snuggling under the covers with an iPod. I know I am. The question is: who's buying what Amazon's selling?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Your Livestock Needs Protection Too
We could talk for a moment about the ephemeral films collection at archive.org.
Or we could watch marionettes talk about nuclear safety.
Your choice.
Or we could watch marionettes talk about nuclear safety.
Your choice.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
I Have Seen the Future
Three years ago, I placed an order with Neighborhoodies. Black hoodie, front zip, teal letters slanting in rounded capitals on the back: I Have Seen the Future.
This was well before I knew what my future would actually contain—before I started college, before I decided to concentrate in history, before I knew that the next four years would contain countless yellowing magazines and aging photographs. At the time, history meant one thing to me, and one thing only. And that thing was world's fairs. Also known as My Obsession.
The Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Photograph from the New York Public Library.
It started with a term paper on world's fairs during my junior year of high school, but soon my fascination had spiraled out of control. I remember stumbling into a used bookshop the sleepless afternoon after finishing a world's fair paper draft, and blearily asking for artifacts—anything to mark the moment. The store owner found me a pamphlet from the 1939 New York World's Fair—by far, my favorite—and handed it to me in its sturdy plastic sleeve. It was out of my price range, but I was well beyond logic. I bought it anyway.
The hoodie came the next year. Unsurprisingly, it was a world's fair reference—visitors to the 1939 New York World's Fair who attended General Motors' Futurama exhibit received "I Have Seen the Future" pins on their way out. One day, not long after I started wearing my future hoodie, someone stopped me on my way to class and asked me, "How is it?" I was startled, and fumbled, "How is what?"
"The future," he replied.
Of course.
Inspired by this Wired article on The Original Futurama, which today caused me to just about explode with happiness.
This was well before I knew what my future would actually contain—before I started college, before I decided to concentrate in history, before I knew that the next four years would contain countless yellowing magazines and aging photographs. At the time, history meant one thing to me, and one thing only. And that thing was world's fairs. Also known as My Obsession.
The Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
Photograph from the New York Public Library.
It started with a term paper on world's fairs during my junior year of high school, but soon my fascination had spiraled out of control. I remember stumbling into a used bookshop the sleepless afternoon after finishing a world's fair paper draft, and blearily asking for artifacts—anything to mark the moment. The store owner found me a pamphlet from the 1939 New York World's Fair—by far, my favorite—and handed it to me in its sturdy plastic sleeve. It was out of my price range, but I was well beyond logic. I bought it anyway.
The hoodie came the next year. Unsurprisingly, it was a world's fair reference—visitors to the 1939 New York World's Fair who attended General Motors' Futurama exhibit received "I Have Seen the Future" pins on their way out. One day, not long after I started wearing my future hoodie, someone stopped me on my way to class and asked me, "How is it?" I was startled, and fumbled, "How is what?"
"The future," he replied.
Of course.
Inspired by this Wired article on The Original Futurama, which today caused me to just about explode with happiness.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Skitter Away
Site statistics are so funny. Over the summer, right before I started blogging, I happened to read a post by Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits about his daily schedule. He mentioned the addictiveness of checking his blog's statistics, and I remember thinking, "yeah right."
Yeah. Right.
Since stepping it up to daily posting this month, I've discovered that my site statistics have suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. For instance, there was the day when for some reason my post on photography became the number one hit on Google for the phrase "ways to win the lottery." Needless to say, a lot of people came to my site that day. And they were disappointed. Because I did not actually write about the lottery.
Lately, I've noticed that a lot of visitors come in search of advice on writing "short personal narratives." While I might know a bit more about short personal narratives than about the lottery, the post they invariably head to is not really about short personal narratives so much as it's about one of my favorite blogs, Awesome!. Maybe I will write about short personal narratives in the future?
This all reminds me of something that game designer Ralph Koster said at MIT's Futures of Entertainment conference a little over a week ago. The topic was fan labor and user-generated content, and Koster concluded that websites "invite the participation so they can measure it. The web is a database. [Users] add to the database. The content is there so we can watch people skittering across it."
Well. I'm a pretty big believer in content, so I certainly don't think its only purpose is to serve as an ice-skating rink for skittering people. But I have to admit: the skittering has its appeal.
That said, if there's something you would like to read here, there's a handy alternative to performing a disappointing Google search. Send me an email! [diana (dot) kimball (at) gmail (dot) com] Or, you know...talk to me in person! I love new ideas, and I'd love to hear yours.
Until then: skitter away.
(A big shout out to the Worlds in Motion blog for capturing Koster's quip verbatim. Right as I was about to clumsily paraphrase half-remembered words, I searched for "purpose content skittering," and was rewarded with the most un-disappointing Google search of my life. Thank you, Worlds in Motion!)
Yeah. Right.
Since stepping it up to daily posting this month, I've discovered that my site statistics have suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. For instance, there was the day when for some reason my post on photography became the number one hit on Google for the phrase "ways to win the lottery." Needless to say, a lot of people came to my site that day. And they were disappointed. Because I did not actually write about the lottery.
Lately, I've noticed that a lot of visitors come in search of advice on writing "short personal narratives." While I might know a bit more about short personal narratives than about the lottery, the post they invariably head to is not really about short personal narratives so much as it's about one of my favorite blogs, Awesome!. Maybe I will write about short personal narratives in the future?
This all reminds me of something that game designer Ralph Koster said at MIT's Futures of Entertainment conference a little over a week ago. The topic was fan labor and user-generated content, and Koster concluded that websites "invite the participation so they can measure it. The web is a database. [Users] add to the database. The content is there so we can watch people skittering across it."
Well. I'm a pretty big believer in content, so I certainly don't think its only purpose is to serve as an ice-skating rink for skittering people. But I have to admit: the skittering has its appeal.
That said, if there's something you would like to read here, there's a handy alternative to performing a disappointing Google search. Send me an email! [diana (dot) kimball (at) gmail (dot) com] Or, you know...talk to me in person! I love new ideas, and I'd love to hear yours.
Until then: skitter away.
(A big shout out to the Worlds in Motion blog for capturing Koster's quip verbatim. Right as I was about to clumsily paraphrase half-remembered words, I searched for "purpose content skittering," and was rewarded with the most un-disappointing Google search of my life. Thank you, Worlds in Motion!)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Symbolic Order
ASCII art on a typewriter?! (Art by Paul Smith.)
Hard to believe that all that beauty comes from @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), and _ . (The main keys Paul Smith used.)
Via BoingBoing.
Hard to believe that all that beauty comes from @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), and _ . (The main keys Paul Smith used.)Via BoingBoing.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
The Economics of Procrastination
Today was going to be the day I learned All of Economics. I have a midterm coming up, you see, and so learning a few economic principles—namely, all of them—seemed like a pretty important use of my time. Sensible, right?
Except, instead of learning All of Economics, I learned Some.
And then spent a really, really long time updating my Google Reader feeds.
The tradeoff was, perhaps, questionable. But now I have a beautiful slate of feeds that reflect my actual priorities. So valuable! The best part about my new system is that I'll be able to digest not only my regular reads, like BoingBoing and Lifehacker, but also the things I forget to read because they don't shove new posts into my face every 5 minutes—the New York Times Magazine, for instance. (Which publishes a measly once per week—i.e., decades in the life of an information addict.)
I won't lie. I'm pretty happy about my newly-functional Google Reader. However, in the spirit of atoning for my economic neglect, I offer you a fascinating article on the economics of RSS feeds. My two pursuits of the day—combined! Real Ultimate Power!
Anyway, in this article Felix Salmon compellingly argues that full-text feeds are the best economic choice for big publications. This may seem counter-intuitive—feeds usually lack the ads and page-view monetization that websites depend upon. Nevertheless, Salmon contends that the types of people using RSS are exactly the types of people you want reading everything you've got. Journalists, bloggers, business leaders and academics are more likely to want their vast streams of incoming information aggregated and stripped of extraneous content, but they're also the most likely to point back to the original article. They're the connectors. They blog, link, e-mail to friends, and cite. They're some of the most valuable readers a publication can have. So why, Salmon asks, do some publications (like the New York Times, unfortunately), insist on truncating their RSS content, making it more difficult for these ultra-readers to do what they do best?
Why, indeed. Some people. They just don't understand economics.
Except, instead of learning All of Economics, I learned Some.
And then spent a really, really long time updating my Google Reader feeds.
The tradeoff was, perhaps, questionable. But now I have a beautiful slate of feeds that reflect my actual priorities. So valuable! The best part about my new system is that I'll be able to digest not only my regular reads, like BoingBoing and Lifehacker, but also the things I forget to read because they don't shove new posts into my face every 5 minutes—the New York Times Magazine, for instance. (Which publishes a measly once per week—i.e., decades in the life of an information addict.)
I won't lie. I'm pretty happy about my newly-functional Google Reader. However, in the spirit of atoning for my economic neglect, I offer you a fascinating article on the economics of RSS feeds. My two pursuits of the day—combined! Real Ultimate Power!
Anyway, in this article Felix Salmon compellingly argues that full-text feeds are the best economic choice for big publications. This may seem counter-intuitive—feeds usually lack the ads and page-view monetization that websites depend upon. Nevertheless, Salmon contends that the types of people using RSS are exactly the types of people you want reading everything you've got. Journalists, bloggers, business leaders and academics are more likely to want their vast streams of incoming information aggregated and stripped of extraneous content, but they're also the most likely to point back to the original article. They're the connectors. They blog, link, e-mail to friends, and cite. They're some of the most valuable readers a publication can have. So why, Salmon asks, do some publications (like the New York Times, unfortunately), insist on truncating their RSS content, making it more difficult for these ultra-readers to do what they do best?
Why, indeed. Some people. They just don't understand economics.
Friday, November 23, 2007
<4
My new favorite emoticon: <4.
You're probably familiar with "<3". But listen to this: Nelson Minar reports that "variants include < / 3 for a broken heart, <$ to convey a financial motive for love, and <4 as the superlative of <3."
?!?!
After reporting this finding to a dear friend today, she responded, "Less-than-four! Wait! The picture becomes a symbol which becomes content which becomes its own text!" Or something like that. Anyway, the point is: once emoticons demand literary analysis, you know they've arrived.
And oh. They've arrived.
Via BoingBoing.
You're probably familiar with "<3". But listen to this: Nelson Minar reports that "variants include < / 3 for a broken heart, <$ to convey a financial motive for love, and <4 as the superlative of <3."
?!?!
After reporting this finding to a dear friend today, she responded, "Less-than-four! Wait! The picture becomes a symbol which becomes content which becomes its own text!" Or something like that. Anyway, the point is: once emoticons demand literary analysis, you know they've arrived.
And oh. They've arrived.
Via BoingBoing.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
21st Century Shopping
My roommate and I just spent 3 (!) hours sitting next to each other with our tiny laptops on the futon in our common room, window-shopping on Etsy. Rapid-fire tag-search wars ensued—"umbrella charm!," "typewriter key!," "watch ring!" It was probably the best "shopping" experience I've ever had. I can't wait to do some real shopping there soon; you know, the kind with money!
I was lucky enough to have a conversation with an Etsy employee last weekend, and she mentioned that the entire site's character springs from the fact that 90% of its sellers are women. Etsy is an online marketplace for handmade goods, but it's also a very strong community. The forum boards are fascinating, especially the current uproar over Etsy's gift guides. Staff members handpicked items from across the site and compiled them into flashy best-ofs. And the community was Not. Happy. Sellers who weren't chosen were very hurt; sellers who were chosen apologized for their good fortune. This all reminded me of something I learned last weekend at Futures of Entertainment: the quickest way to kill goodwill in any online community is to turn it into contest. Everyone wants validation, but the dream of Ultimate Validation from a mysterious authority figure tends to distract from the community vision of validating one other.
So basically, Etsy is a one-stop shop for both beautiful, one-of-a-kind items and advanced studies in human nature. Could you really ask for more?
I was lucky enough to have a conversation with an Etsy employee last weekend, and she mentioned that the entire site's character springs from the fact that 90% of its sellers are women. Etsy is an online marketplace for handmade goods, but it's also a very strong community. The forum boards are fascinating, especially the current uproar over Etsy's gift guides. Staff members handpicked items from across the site and compiled them into flashy best-ofs. And the community was Not. Happy. Sellers who weren't chosen were very hurt; sellers who were chosen apologized for their good fortune. This all reminded me of something I learned last weekend at Futures of Entertainment: the quickest way to kill goodwill in any online community is to turn it into contest. Everyone wants validation, but the dream of Ultimate Validation from a mysterious authority figure tends to distract from the community vision of validating one other.
So basically, Etsy is a one-stop shop for both beautiful, one-of-a-kind items and advanced studies in human nature. Could you really ask for more?
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Keeping Secrets
Secret glimpses of the lives of others, found pressed between the pages of books.
AND
LOLSecretz. I nearly died laughing.
AND
LOLSecretz. I nearly died laughing.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Scratch Paper and Scotch Tape
Once, I tried to make my Halloween costume out of scrap paper. I was probably about 8 years old. I spent hours—days!—cutting flowers out of my dad's discarded print-outs, and taping them together with scotch tape. It was going to be a dress! A pretty dress! I had a couple square feet of "fabric" finished before my mom pointed out that it usually rains on Halloween back home. Disappointment! Dejection!
However, the time I made a violin out of scrap paper (after seeing a real violin made on Reading Rainbow), turned out to be a total success. Hey. You win some, you lose some, right?
But okay. What I'm really getting at is that the Laptop Club of North Carolina wins. Forever. These 7-to-9-year-olds spontaneously decided to design "laptops" made out of construction paper. And play with them.
The buttons on these things just kill me—"private code" and "imediet buy"? THESE ARE MY PEOPLE.
I mean. Seriously.
However, the time I made a violin out of scrap paper (after seeing a real violin made on Reading Rainbow), turned out to be a total success. Hey. You win some, you lose some, right?
But okay. What I'm really getting at is that the Laptop Club of North Carolina wins. Forever. These 7-to-9-year-olds spontaneously decided to design "laptops" made out of construction paper. And play with them.
The buttons on these things just kill me—"private code" and "imediet buy"? THESE ARE MY PEOPLE.
I mean. Seriously.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Mesmirizomatic
Color!
Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods, is pretty neat in general. But their color picker just takes the cake. I could sit at my computer all day, just waving my cursor over the swelling and receding rainbow dots. (They're alive!) Also—each color dot leads to merchandise of that color. Functional and beautiful. I love it.
Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods, is pretty neat in general. But their color picker just takes the cake. I could sit at my computer all day, just waving my cursor over the swelling and receding rainbow dots. (They're alive!) Also—each color dot leads to merchandise of that color. Functional and beautiful. I love it.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Kindling
Having just experienced the excitement overload that was Futures of Entertainment 2, I was relieved to come across the Future of Reading today. Only one future! And only one form of entertainment! Now that, I can manage.
However, after diving into this Future of Reading—a Newsweek article focused on Amazon.com's upcoming Kindle e-book reader—I have to say that its problems and potential look an awful lot like those facing other forms entertainment in the online sphere. The hazards of user engagement, the increasing brevity of audience attention spans, and the loss of canonical authorship are all fears that television, radio, and comic books face as well.
The Kindle is an intriguing object. It's engineered to be as book-like as possible. However, I have a feeling that the iPhone will become a successful e-book platform far before the Kindle. Given that the Kindle will cost $400, I'm having trouble imagining a teenager who would buy a Kindle before buying an iPod Touch, which sits in the same price range.
The Kindle is a great idea, and I think it probably will be successful as a bridge device for the digitally reluctant. But for now, I'm saving my money. From early photos (pictured above), it appears that the Kindle has done a good job of looking dated. Only, instead of looking appealingly dated, like the contents of a dusty used bookstore, the Kindle kind of looks dated like an NES. Nothing against NES, of course. It's just that now we have the Wii, you know?
However, after diving into this Future of Reading—a Newsweek article focused on Amazon.com's upcoming Kindle e-book reader—I have to say that its problems and potential look an awful lot like those facing other forms entertainment in the online sphere. The hazards of user engagement, the increasing brevity of audience attention spans, and the loss of canonical authorship are all fears that television, radio, and comic books face as well.
The Kindle is an intriguing object. It's engineered to be as book-like as possible. However, I have a feeling that the iPhone will become a successful e-book platform far before the Kindle. Given that the Kindle will cost $400, I'm having trouble imagining a teenager who would buy a Kindle before buying an iPod Touch, which sits in the same price range.
The Kindle is a great idea, and I think it probably will be successful as a bridge device for the digitally reluctant. But for now, I'm saving my money. From early photos (pictured above), it appears that the Kindle has done a good job of looking dated. Only, instead of looking appealingly dated, like the contents of a dusty used bookstore, the Kindle kind of looks dated like an NES. Nothing against NES, of course. It's just that now we have the Wii, you know?
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Futures of Entertainment
Even though it's only two subway stops away, I'd literally never been to MIT before this week. It existed in a sort of alternate universe, where the buildings looked like pages out of Dr. Seuss, and geeks became geekier, instead of becoming i-bankers. [Edit: it has been pointed out to me that students from MIT go into i-banking, too....except that by and large, they become the PROGRAMMERS for i-banking firms. Sort of like the geekier side of i-banking, I guess?]
But all of a sudden, I'm there all the time! Since MIT is like a technology wonderland, I think this is a sign that my hope of becoming awesome at the Internet by the end of 2007 is finding some success. At the very least, I'm moving closer to the source. Hang on, computers! Here I come!
So first, this week, it was a failed attempt to witness MITHenge on Monday. (Clouds obscure sunlight; who knew?)
What MITHenge in the Infinite Corridor would have looked like—if there had been any sunlight! Photo from this very geeky and wonderful site that explains MITHenge.
But the MITHenge-that-wasn't was just the beginning. Over the past two days, I've had the extremely energizing and overwhelming experience of attending Futures of Entertainment 2, put on by the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, otherwise known as C3. Having just attended Cyberposium at Harvard Business School last weekend, I noticed a few major differences between the two conferences. In the spirit of celebrating and investigating these two very weird and different spheres, I thought I'd talk about those differences for a minute.
First of all, Futures of Entertainment was quite a bit more forward-thinking than Cyberposium. Cyberposium had a much larger audience, but they were drastically less engaged than the audience at Futures of Entertainment. I heard someone make the observation that all the typing in the tiny FoE2 auditorium sounded like a cacophony of white noise. To me, it sounded like syncopated rain. It was so strange to sit in the audience and look out on the sea of laptop screens before me. It was especially weird to see people's "workflows" out of the corner of my eye. One of the speakers would mention a website, and immediately people were searching for it. Someone from the audience set up a group chatroom on Meebo to host a running, silent commentary. Most interesting part: the person who set up the chatroom advertised it on the group's "backchannel," a huge screen set up beside the speakers that displayed audience-generated comments and questions, and allowed other members of the audience to vote the comments up and down. Audience members looked at least as much to the board for information as to the speakers themselves.
The second difference was in the organization of the conference itself. FoE2 was a conference built for people who are Internet fluent, who live it and breathe it. I got the feeling at Cyberposium that the whole conference was just a nice little advertisement for future possibilities, geared toward a skeptical but curious audience. The conference was run, largely, in an extremely traditional way, and indeed, the results felt a bit stale at times. Although the panels were quick at Cyberposium—no more than an hour each—they cut off interesting conversations at the knees, because they weren't built for the kind of interaction that working in the Internet sphere demands. As a result, they felt much longer.
At FoE2, on the contrary, we had a conference built for Internet personalities. The panels were long—almost two and a half hours each!—but they absolutely flew by, due to the engagement of the speakers with each other and the audience with the speakers. The whole ecology of the conference was built around conventions of the Internet. There was even a tagging protocol put forward by the conference organizers, I think, that suggested all blog entries on the conference be tagged "MIT-FoE2" so that the conference organizers could "find and link to them." At first, this seemed curious to me. And then I realized that everyone was liveblogging the event. There's the official FoE2 liveblog on the C3 site, sure, but there were also many, many audience members whose own blog audiences are just as large.
I will admit, it was disconcerting for me to watch people's attention drifting in and out of the panels; it was disconcerting for their eyes, and mine, to so often be watching the "backchannel" screen to the left and up, instead of the facial expressions of the panel members themselves. Even though I've been known to rapidly shift tasks during lectures myself, I still felt bad for the speakers. Although I recognized this attention distribution to be completely natural for the situation, I still got the feeling that people were whispering behind the panelists' backs.
Accurate or not, this feeling does reveal one more aspect of the equation: it's not really "whispering" when the panelists, and everyone in the world, can read the whispers on your blog later. In a way, this whole interactive-and-reactive experience of the conference mirrored many of the problems and solutions posed by the conference. In a convergence culture, you will have a metalayer of commentary on whatever you're doing. No matter what. The question is: do you invite it or do you stifle it? Futures of Entertainment decided not only to invite it, but to welcome it with open arms and a couple pieces of freshly-baked baklava.
And although it may have been confronting to see audience members "not paying attention," or "not playing by the rules" with which we're all comfortable, I have to say that Futures of Entertainment managed to be simultaneously fascinating, energizing, and completely overwhelming.
Information overload converged on a point, and that point was two subway stops away. It worked. And you can bet I'll be back.
But all of a sudden, I'm there all the time! Since MIT is like a technology wonderland, I think this is a sign that my hope of becoming awesome at the Internet by the end of 2007 is finding some success. At the very least, I'm moving closer to the source. Hang on, computers! Here I come!
So first, this week, it was a failed attempt to witness MITHenge on Monday. (Clouds obscure sunlight; who knew?)
What MITHenge in the Infinite Corridor would have looked like—if there had been any sunlight! Photo from this very geeky and wonderful site that explains MITHenge.
But the MITHenge-that-wasn't was just the beginning. Over the past two days, I've had the extremely energizing and overwhelming experience of attending Futures of Entertainment 2, put on by the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, otherwise known as C3. Having just attended Cyberposium at Harvard Business School last weekend, I noticed a few major differences between the two conferences. In the spirit of celebrating and investigating these two very weird and different spheres, I thought I'd talk about those differences for a minute.
First of all, Futures of Entertainment was quite a bit more forward-thinking than Cyberposium. Cyberposium had a much larger audience, but they were drastically less engaged than the audience at Futures of Entertainment. I heard someone make the observation that all the typing in the tiny FoE2 auditorium sounded like a cacophony of white noise. To me, it sounded like syncopated rain. It was so strange to sit in the audience and look out on the sea of laptop screens before me. It was especially weird to see people's "workflows" out of the corner of my eye. One of the speakers would mention a website, and immediately people were searching for it. Someone from the audience set up a group chatroom on Meebo to host a running, silent commentary. Most interesting part: the person who set up the chatroom advertised it on the group's "backchannel," a huge screen set up beside the speakers that displayed audience-generated comments and questions, and allowed other members of the audience to vote the comments up and down. Audience members looked at least as much to the board for information as to the speakers themselves.
The second difference was in the organization of the conference itself. FoE2 was a conference built for people who are Internet fluent, who live it and breathe it. I got the feeling at Cyberposium that the whole conference was just a nice little advertisement for future possibilities, geared toward a skeptical but curious audience. The conference was run, largely, in an extremely traditional way, and indeed, the results felt a bit stale at times. Although the panels were quick at Cyberposium—no more than an hour each—they cut off interesting conversations at the knees, because they weren't built for the kind of interaction that working in the Internet sphere demands. As a result, they felt much longer.
At FoE2, on the contrary, we had a conference built for Internet personalities. The panels were long—almost two and a half hours each!—but they absolutely flew by, due to the engagement of the speakers with each other and the audience with the speakers. The whole ecology of the conference was built around conventions of the Internet. There was even a tagging protocol put forward by the conference organizers, I think, that suggested all blog entries on the conference be tagged "MIT-FoE2" so that the conference organizers could "find and link to them." At first, this seemed curious to me. And then I realized that everyone was liveblogging the event. There's the official FoE2 liveblog on the C3 site, sure, but there were also many, many audience members whose own blog audiences are just as large.
I will admit, it was disconcerting for me to watch people's attention drifting in and out of the panels; it was disconcerting for their eyes, and mine, to so often be watching the "backchannel" screen to the left and up, instead of the facial expressions of the panel members themselves. Even though I've been known to rapidly shift tasks during lectures myself, I still felt bad for the speakers. Although I recognized this attention distribution to be completely natural for the situation, I still got the feeling that people were whispering behind the panelists' backs.
Accurate or not, this feeling does reveal one more aspect of the equation: it's not really "whispering" when the panelists, and everyone in the world, can read the whispers on your blog later. In a way, this whole interactive-and-reactive experience of the conference mirrored many of the problems and solutions posed by the conference. In a convergence culture, you will have a metalayer of commentary on whatever you're doing. No matter what. The question is: do you invite it or do you stifle it? Futures of Entertainment decided not only to invite it, but to welcome it with open arms and a couple pieces of freshly-baked baklava.
And although it may have been confronting to see audience members "not paying attention," or "not playing by the rules" with which we're all comfortable, I have to say that Futures of Entertainment managed to be simultaneously fascinating, energizing, and completely overwhelming.
Information overload converged on a point, and that point was two subway stops away. It worked. And you can bet I'll be back.
Friday, November 16, 2007
ROFL!
Not too long ago, ROFLCon — endearingly pronounced "rofflecon"— was a mere glint in Tim Hwang's eye. The left one, specifically. And look at it now! ROFLCon, conceived as an "Internet meme spectacular," has locked in xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, and Homestar Runner. And about a gajillion other Internet superstars, with more to come.
Slated to go down sometime next spring at Harvard/MIT, I think it's safe to say that ROFLCon will be a highlight of my life. Which is why I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be part of The Team. Being part of The Team essentially means that I get to send people e-mails and throw around phrases like "scholarly endeavor," "a night of revelry followed by a day of conference followed by another night of revelry," and "the Internet will manifest itself in one place at one time!" But we like to think of The Team as sort of a secret society, too. Or, um...at least I do.
(I guess it's not such a secret society if it has its own web page?)
Anyway!
I'm cross-referencing here to announce my first ROFLsuccess—StupidFilter guys are coming to ROFLCon! And by "StupidFilter guys," I mean "Gabe and Paul, who run StupidFilter, and who are pretty awesome." I invited them, and they said yes. It was like asking someone to junior prom in high school...except with more references to memetic theory.
Let's dance.
Or roll on the floor laughing. I guess that works, too.
Slated to go down sometime next spring at Harvard/MIT, I think it's safe to say that ROFLCon will be a highlight of my life. Which is why I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be part of The Team. Being part of The Team essentially means that I get to send people e-mails and throw around phrases like "scholarly endeavor," "a night of revelry followed by a day of conference followed by another night of revelry," and "the Internet will manifest itself in one place at one time!" But we like to think of The Team as sort of a secret society, too. Or, um...at least I do.
(I guess it's not such a secret society if it has its own web page?)
Anyway!
I'm cross-referencing here to announce my first ROFLsuccess—StupidFilter guys are coming to ROFLCon! And by "StupidFilter guys," I mean "Gabe and Paul, who run StupidFilter, and who are pretty awesome." I invited them, and they said yes. It was like asking someone to junior prom in high school...except with more references to memetic theory.
Let's dance.
Or roll on the floor laughing. I guess that works, too.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Harvard Business School 2+2: Getting In
Two weeks ago, we talked about Harvard Business School's new fast-track program for college juniors, HBS 2+2. Since then, quite a few people have stopped by this website wanting to know more. This week, I'm going to take a look at the million dollar question:
Who will get in to HBS 2+2?
I'm an undergraduate at Harvard right now, and I've been watching HBS 2+2 pretty closely. I think I have some answers . However, before we get started on the Magical Mystery Tour of HBS 2+2 Admissions, I'd like to point out one very important fact: we don't actually know who will be admitted, because no one's been admitted yet. The very first round of applications isn't due until July; frankly, not even HBS knows who they're going to admit. So, before you get too nervous, remember: anything's possible. These are not definitive answers, because very few definitive answers exist.
That said, there are some pretty substantial clues.
(Hint: liberal arts majors, women, and geeks are in demand.)
But before we dive in, here's a rundown of what HBS 2+2 is all about:
1. Apply in July after your junior year of college.
2. Receive acceptance/rejection by September of senior year.
3. Team up with a career coach who will help you find a job that's allegedly right for you.
4. Attend HBS 2+2 Summer Program in the summer after college.
5. Work two years at your job, with another HBS 2+2 Summer Program between Year 1 and Year 2.
6. Matriculate at HBS after two years of work.
(Check out this graphic timeline on the HBS 2+2 website for more details.)
Two years of work, two years of school. 2+2. It's a pretty great deal, for the students and for HBS. But who will be lucky enough to get in?
Officially, HBS 2+2 is looking for liberal arts majors who are juniors in college—those "not on a business trajectory." Do Economics majors count as being "on a business trajectory," or not? At a prospective students event for Harvard Business School three weeks ago, an admissions officer answered this question by saying that "We consider Economics majors to be liberal arts majors"—therefore, Economics majors are fine. However, "business majors," which exist at some colleges, are not the 2+2 target audience. "They don't need our resources," according to the admissions officer.
Also, despite a Wall Street Journal article that implied the opposite, HBS 2+2 is not just for Harvard undergraduates. Far from it. Whatever HBS's other motivations are for 2+2, they're pretty serious about using 2+2 to "increase diversity" in the class of 2013 and beyond.
The Wall Street Journal article offered a final clue: stellar women candidates are very much in demand.
"By providing deferred admission, 2+2 will also help Harvard Business School attract more women applicants, says Carl Kester, deputy dean for academic affairs. The demographic is one that M.B.A. programs in general have historically struggled to recruit. 'Young women who are considering an M.B.A., but believe they need for five or six years of work experience before applying, are often faced with concerns about when they might start a family,' he says. 'By comparison, many professional-degree programs can be completed in less than five years.'"
So far, we have the following...
____
Official Characteristics of the Target HBS 2+2 Candidate
1. Junior in college.
2. Liberal arts major—not business major. Economics is okay.
3. "Not on a business trajectory"—could benefit the most from HBS's resources.
4. Women and other traditionally difficult-to-recruit candidates are valued.
____
Now, we get into more speculative territory. At the same prospective students event three weeks ago, the admissions officer said something interesting about leadership. Paraphrased:
"We're looking for the same qualities of leadership in 2+2 candidates that we look for in our regular admits. However, when most people think of the word "leader" they think of the person who's in charge of everything—in charge of a million clubs and publications. We're certainly looking for those people, but we're also looking for different kinds of leaders. You could be a thought leader, for instance—someone who's on the cutting edge. Or you could be a leader in terms of excelling at actualizing other people's ideas and making them happen."
Who are "thought leaders," and what does it mean to be one? It's hard to say, and I think that HBS probably operates on a policy of "we know it when we see it." However, I have one guess, substantiated by some of their targeted advertising:
They're going after geeks.
I haven't seen everything on the Internet, by any means, so this is a very biased observation. However, I did notice a few weeks ago that HBS 2+2 was advertising pretty heavily on BoingBoing—bastion of geekdom, palace of blogging. I've heard that BoingBoing is the third-most-read blog on the Internet, so advertising there seems like a logical step. But let's think about the audience there—certainly not your "traditional" business school candidates. We're talking computer science students, future founders of Internet startups, and yes, a lot of pretty regular people who just love weird things, antique ephemera, and free culture. (Of BoingBoing's readers, I'm definitely in the third category! No computer science superstar here.)
Let's take a look at some screenshots:
Sidebar banner ad I noticed next to my profile page. Incidentally, feel free to friend me over there!
Who will get in to HBS 2+2?
I'm an undergraduate at Harvard right now, and I've been watching HBS 2+2 pretty closely. I think I have some answers . However, before we get started on the Magical Mystery Tour of HBS 2+2 Admissions, I'd like to point out one very important fact: we don't actually know who will be admitted, because no one's been admitted yet. The very first round of applications isn't due until July; frankly, not even HBS knows who they're going to admit. So, before you get too nervous, remember: anything's possible. These are not definitive answers, because very few definitive answers exist.
That said, there are some pretty substantial clues.
(Hint: liberal arts majors, women, and geeks are in demand.)
But before we dive in, here's a rundown of what HBS 2+2 is all about:
1. Apply in July after your junior year of college.
2. Receive acceptance/rejection by September of senior year.
3. Team up with a career coach who will help you find a job that's allegedly right for you.
4. Attend HBS 2+2 Summer Program in the summer after college.
5. Work two years at your job, with another HBS 2+2 Summer Program between Year 1 and Year 2.
6. Matriculate at HBS after two years of work.
(Check out this graphic timeline on the HBS 2+2 website for more details.)
Two years of work, two years of school. 2+2. It's a pretty great deal, for the students and for HBS. But who will be lucky enough to get in?
Officially, HBS 2+2 is looking for liberal arts majors who are juniors in college—those "not on a business trajectory." Do Economics majors count as being "on a business trajectory," or not? At a prospective students event for Harvard Business School three weeks ago, an admissions officer answered this question by saying that "We consider Economics majors to be liberal arts majors"—therefore, Economics majors are fine. However, "business majors," which exist at some colleges, are not the 2+2 target audience. "They don't need our resources," according to the admissions officer.
Also, despite a Wall Street Journal article that implied the opposite, HBS 2+2 is not just for Harvard undergraduates. Far from it. Whatever HBS's other motivations are for 2+2, they're pretty serious about using 2+2 to "increase diversity" in the class of 2013 and beyond.
The Wall Street Journal article offered a final clue: stellar women candidates are very much in demand.
"By providing deferred admission, 2+2 will also help Harvard Business School attract more women applicants, says Carl Kester, deputy dean for academic affairs. The demographic is one that M.B.A. programs in general have historically struggled to recruit. 'Young women who are considering an M.B.A., but believe they need for five or six years of work experience before applying, are often faced with concerns about when they might start a family,' he says. 'By comparison, many professional-degree programs can be completed in less than five years.'"
So far, we have the following...
____
Official Characteristics of the Target HBS 2+2 Candidate
1. Junior in college.
2. Liberal arts major—not business major. Economics is okay.
3. "Not on a business trajectory"—could benefit the most from HBS's resources.
4. Women and other traditionally difficult-to-recruit candidates are valued.
____
Now, we get into more speculative territory. At the same prospective students event three weeks ago, the admissions officer said something interesting about leadership. Paraphrased:
"We're looking for the same qualities of leadership in 2+2 candidates that we look for in our regular admits. However, when most people think of the word "leader" they think of the person who's in charge of everything—in charge of a million clubs and publications. We're certainly looking for those people, but we're also looking for different kinds of leaders. You could be a thought leader, for instance—someone who's on the cutting edge. Or you could be a leader in terms of excelling at actualizing other people's ideas and making them happen."
Who are "thought leaders," and what does it mean to be one? It's hard to say, and I think that HBS probably operates on a policy of "we know it when we see it." However, I have one guess, substantiated by some of their targeted advertising:
They're going after geeks.
I haven't seen everything on the Internet, by any means, so this is a very biased observation. However, I did notice a few weeks ago that HBS 2+2 was advertising pretty heavily on BoingBoing—bastion of geekdom, palace of blogging. I've heard that BoingBoing is the third-most-read blog on the Internet, so advertising there seems like a logical step. But let's think about the audience there—certainly not your "traditional" business school candidates. We're talking computer science students, future founders of Internet startups, and yes, a lot of pretty regular people who just love weird things, antique ephemera, and free culture. (Of BoingBoing's readers, I'm definitely in the third category! No computer science superstar here.)
Let's take a look at some screenshots:
Banner ad on BoingBoing main page.
Sidebar banner ad I noticed next to my profile page. Incidentally, feel free to friend me over there!
Those look like big ads to me, and I think that demonstrates at least some level of targeting. However, if anyone has encountered these ads elsewhere on the Internet or in print, I'd love to hear about them.
____
Right now, HBS 2+2 is a big mystery; I think the number of people who come to this website looking for answers shows just how big that mystery really is. And if you read my last HBS 2+2 article, you'll know that I think this is a calculated move on the part of Harvard Business School—it's just hard to tell exactly what that calculation is. While I certainly don't intend this post to be the last word on HBS 2+2 admissions, let alone a true guide to "getting in," I thought it was worth laying out what we already know:
Liberal arts majors,
Students "not on a business trajectory,"
Women and members of other traditionally-hard-to-recruit groups,
"Thought leaders" and actualizing leaders
And quite possibly geeks
—in their junior year of college—
constitute a good chunk of Harvard Business School's target audience for HBS 2+2.
So while we may not know exactly who Harvard Business School's 2+2 program will admit, we do know who they're hoping will apply. And I'd venture to say that that's better than nothing.
___
If you have any questions, comments, or information on this or any other topic, please feel free to e-mail me at: dkimball (at) fas (dot) harvard (dot) edu or diana (dot) kimball (at) gmail (dot) com.
For more information on HBS 2+2, check out this coverage in the Harvard Crimson and this article in the Harvard Gazette.
____
Right now, HBS 2+2 is a big mystery; I think the number of people who come to this website looking for answers shows just how big that mystery really is. And if you read my last HBS 2+2 article, you'll know that I think this is a calculated move on the part of Harvard Business School—it's just hard to tell exactly what that calculation is. While I certainly don't intend this post to be the last word on HBS 2+2 admissions, let alone a true guide to "getting in," I thought it was worth laying out what we already know:
Liberal arts majors,
Students "not on a business trajectory,"
Women and members of other traditionally-hard-to-recruit groups,
"Thought leaders" and actualizing leaders
And quite possibly geeks
—in their junior year of college—
constitute a good chunk of Harvard Business School's target audience for HBS 2+2.
So while we may not know exactly who Harvard Business School's 2+2 program will admit, we do know who they're hoping will apply. And I'd venture to say that that's better than nothing.
___
If you have any questions, comments, or information on this or any other topic, please feel free to e-mail me at: dkimball (at) fas (dot) harvard (dot) edu or diana (dot) kimball (at) gmail (dot) com.
For more information on HBS 2+2, check out this coverage in the Harvard Crimson and this article in the Harvard Gazette.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Magicians from Long Ago
If you take a look to the right—yes, that right, the one to the right of you—you might notice that I have expressed a mysterious interest in "magicians from long ago." Well. There is a good reason for that. And that is because I like to keep things a little bit mysterious.
But also:
I really am interested in magicians from long ago! Two years ago, I wrote my very first research paper of college on "The Cult of the Amateur Magician" at the turn of the twentieth century. To write this paper, I read many, many amateur magicians' magazines. I spent countless afternoons in the Harvard Theatre Collection, reading tricks and trivia and marveling at the ancient feel of nouns and verbs.
Since then, I've always kept "magicians from long ago" in the back of my mind. It was sort of an audacious paper to write—one that felt brave at the time, in a sitting-in-the-library kind of way. I especially loved the imagery; I have a poster of "Thurston the Famous Magician" hanging in my dorm room.
So imagine my delight at discovering The Magic Gallery online. The site claims to be a collection of "vintage magic posters and related items from the golden age of magic, 1890- 1930," but I'm pretty sure what they meant to say was, "Here, Diana. Go ahead and change your desktop background every day. You know you want to."
And after that picture? Come on. You know you want to, too.
But also:
I really am interested in magicians from long ago! Two years ago, I wrote my very first research paper of college on "The Cult of the Amateur Magician" at the turn of the twentieth century. To write this paper, I read many, many amateur magicians' magazines. I spent countless afternoons in the Harvard Theatre Collection, reading tricks and trivia and marveling at the ancient feel of nouns and verbs.
Since then, I've always kept "magicians from long ago" in the back of my mind. It was sort of an audacious paper to write—one that felt brave at the time, in a sitting-in-the-library kind of way. I especially loved the imagery; I have a poster of "Thurston the Famous Magician" hanging in my dorm room.
So imagine my delight at discovering The Magic Gallery online. The site claims to be a collection of "vintage magic posters and related items from the golden age of magic, 1890- 1930," but I'm pretty sure what they meant to say was, "Here, Diana. Go ahead and change your desktop background every day. You know you want to."
And after that picture? Come on. You know you want to, too.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Text Me
For a long time, I wondered: what's all the fuss about text files? Reading Lifehacker, I would occasionally come across mysterious tales of "txt" devotion—the Google VP who organizes her life in text comes to mind—and think, what's the big deal? Text files felt like a giant technological leap backward, after the formatted majesty that is Word.
Now I get it. Formatted majesty is painfully slow.
And definitely, definitely not instantly resizable.
After installing Leopard two weeks ago and playing around with Spaces (the virtual desktop feature) for a while, I, too, have become a txt addict. I wouldn't write a term paper in TextEdit or anything, but there are all sorts of things I DO write down now that I never did before, for lack of a good place to stash those text fragments. The beauty of Spaces is that I can have a separate TextEdit window permanently parked along the right-hand side of each virtual desktop, ready and waiting for context-relevant text input. When I'm taking notes on class readings in PDF, I park a TextEdit window beside Preview, and can move effortlessly between the two. (Which means that I actually take notes on PDF readings now, which, um...wasn't always the case.) When I'm making a ginormo library list for paper research, I can keep the potential book list, the library catalog, and the "grocery list" of books to pick up all open simultaneously. (Pictured below.)
Seriously, the list goes on and on. I mean, who couldn't use ubiquitous text capture in all the workspaces of their lives? And when almost all those spaces exist on the computer? Ideal. Txt to the rescue.
Now I get it. Formatted majesty is painfully slow.
And definitely, definitely not instantly resizable.
After installing Leopard two weeks ago and playing around with Spaces (the virtual desktop feature) for a while, I, too, have become a txt addict. I wouldn't write a term paper in TextEdit or anything, but there are all sorts of things I DO write down now that I never did before, for lack of a good place to stash those text fragments. The beauty of Spaces is that I can have a separate TextEdit window permanently parked along the right-hand side of each virtual desktop, ready and waiting for context-relevant text input. When I'm taking notes on class readings in PDF, I park a TextEdit window beside Preview, and can move effortlessly between the two. (Which means that I actually take notes on PDF readings now, which, um...wasn't always the case.) When I'm making a ginormo library list for paper research, I can keep the potential book list, the library catalog, and the "grocery list" of books to pick up all open simultaneously. (Pictured below.)
Seriously, the list goes on and on. I mean, who couldn't use ubiquitous text capture in all the workspaces of their lives? And when almost all those spaces exist on the computer? Ideal. Txt to the rescue.
Monday, November 12, 2007
My First Crush (and Yours, Too!)
This American Life meets Waking Life meets Winnie-the-Pooh:
I absolutely love this sweet little animated documentary vignette by Julia Pott. Wistful voices remember their first crushes; soon enough, so do you.
Take that, Slate magazine! YouTube may have a dark side, but secretly, it has a lovely side, too.
I absolutely love this sweet little animated documentary vignette by Julia Pott. Wistful voices remember their first crushes; soon enough, so do you.
Take that, Slate magazine! YouTube may have a dark side, but secretly, it has a lovely side, too.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Like an Open Book
Occasionally, people stop me in libraries. "Where did you get that?," they ask, looking at the book magically propped beside my laptop. They're asking about the magic. And the magic is Page Boy.
Two and a half years ago, during my first week of freshman year, I purchased this amazing fold-up wire book stand from the Harvard Coop, for about $5. I hadn't run across another Page Boy in years, but when I went searching today, I found it for sale at this site. I own a lot of gadgets. But I'd venture to say that not one of them has given me more productivity and delight per dollar than the Page Boy. I use it literally every day; it enables me to interface between books and my laptop simultaneously. If you've ever tried to take notes or copy down quotations from a book by weighting it open with a stapler and a half-empty bag of chips (so ineffective, by the way), you'll know what I mean. The Page Boy is simple, elegant, portable, works with almost any book you could imagine, never tips over, and keeps your book on a plane parallel to your laptop's screen. I can't imagine college without it.
Well. I can. But college would involve a lot more staplers and half-empty bags of chips.
Two and a half years ago, during my first week of freshman year, I purchased this amazing fold-up wire book stand from the Harvard Coop, for about $5. I hadn't run across another Page Boy in years, but when I went searching today, I found it for sale at this site. I own a lot of gadgets. But I'd venture to say that not one of them has given me more productivity and delight per dollar than the Page Boy. I use it literally every day; it enables me to interface between books and my laptop simultaneously. If you've ever tried to take notes or copy down quotations from a book by weighting it open with a stapler and a half-empty bag of chips (so ineffective, by the way), you'll know what I mean. The Page Boy is simple, elegant, portable, works with almost any book you could imagine, never tips over, and keeps your book on a plane parallel to your laptop's screen. I can't imagine college without it.
Well. I can. But college would involve a lot more staplers and half-empty bags of chips.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Walt Mossberg on History
Today at Cyberposium 13, Harvard Business School's annual tech conference, I had the completely delighting experience of meeting Walt Mossberg, eminent Wall Street Journal personal technology columnist, in person.
Right before his keynote, my new MIT friends and I sidled up to the front of the auditorium, hoping for photos. Walt Mossberg was very accommodating, even waiting for my interminably slow flash to go off. For three separate photographs.
After we were finished documenting our brush with celebrity, Walt asked each of us where we went to school, and when I told him I went to Harvard, he asked what I studied here. "Um...actually history," I said, probably blushing a little bit. This was a technology conference after all—you know, like the future. Like not the past. Walt just looked at me and said "What do you mean, 'actually history?' History is, like, wicked important!" He pulled off the slang with just a little bit of sassiness. It was confronting and charming at the same time. Thanks to him, I will never apologize for history again. And will have an awesome story to tell. For the rest of my life.
Right before his keynote, my new MIT friends and I sidled up to the front of the auditorium, hoping for photos. Walt Mossberg was very accommodating, even waiting for my interminably slow flash to go off. For three separate photographs.
After we were finished documenting our brush with celebrity, Walt asked each of us where we went to school, and when I told him I went to Harvard, he asked what I studied here. "Um...actually history," I said, probably blushing a little bit. This was a technology conference after all—you know, like the future. Like not the past. Walt just looked at me and said "What do you mean, 'actually history?' History is, like, wicked important!" He pulled off the slang with just a little bit of sassiness. It was confronting and charming at the same time. Thanks to him, I will never apologize for history again. And will have an awesome story to tell. For the rest of my life.
Friday, November 9, 2007
"PostSecret Meets Getting Things Done"
No way!
How did I not hear about this earlier? To-Do List Blog, where people send in real, handwritten to-do lists which are then posted as artifacts of people's lives??? In the words of Blogger Buzz, "Think PostSecret meets Getting Things Done."
This is probably the most appealing way a website has ever been described to me. Ever.
As you can see, To-Do List Blog has basically combined two stationery memes—revelatory postcards and the Best Productivity System Ever—into one massively addictive meme. Efficiency, vernacular artifacts, and harmless voyeurism. How could it possibly be better?
Hmm. I might just be thinking meme-wise because of ROFLCon 2008, the Internet Meme Spectacular that I'm helping to put together. Everything's a meme! Grocery shopping is a meme! Writing things on paper is a meme! Making lists is a meme! Okay. So maybe "stationery meme" is going a little far, not to mention stretching the definition of the word "meme." But that's beside the point. Just take a look at this Boyfriend Criteria list from the To-Do List Blog, and you'll see what I mean:
Don't you just want to make your own? Slash spend 2-3 hours reading all the archives at To-Do List Blog, which, um...it is possible I will do.
How did I not hear about this earlier? To-Do List Blog, where people send in real, handwritten to-do lists which are then posted as artifacts of people's lives??? In the words of Blogger Buzz, "Think PostSecret meets Getting Things Done."
This is probably the most appealing way a website has ever been described to me. Ever.
As you can see, To-Do List Blog has basically combined two stationery memes—revelatory postcards and the Best Productivity System Ever—into one massively addictive meme. Efficiency, vernacular artifacts, and harmless voyeurism. How could it possibly be better?
Hmm. I might just be thinking meme-wise because of ROFLCon 2008, the Internet Meme Spectacular that I'm helping to put together. Everything's a meme! Grocery shopping is a meme! Writing things on paper is a meme! Making lists is a meme! Okay. So maybe "stationery meme" is going a little far, not to mention stretching the definition of the word "meme." But that's beside the point. Just take a look at this Boyfriend Criteria list from the To-Do List Blog, and you'll see what I mean:
Don't you just want to make your own? Slash spend 2-3 hours reading all the archives at To-Do List Blog, which, um...it is possible I will do.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
5 Things I Love about my iPod Shuffle
1. Sits comfortably on my belt loop all day long.
2. Weightless.
3. THE iPOD IS A CLIP. I'm still having trouble understanding how such greatness is possible. And I've had mine for over 6 months.
4. Smaller number of songs and screenless interface mean that I interact with my iPod shuffle as music, not as a device. I'm barely aware of the object itself, and that's pretty wonderful; it becomes an extension of me, clipped to my shoulder strap or belt loop or shirt hem. And songs come out of it. Which is a bonus.
5. As I walk along the streets of Cambridge, trying not to trip over jutting bricks in the uneven sidewalks, I will hold my shuffle between two fingers, navigating through songs (back, forward, forward), until I find one that I know is on there, and I'm navigating the sidewalks at same time, and it all becomes the same thing—the process of making my way through this world.
2. Weightless.
3. THE iPOD IS A CLIP. I'm still having trouble understanding how such greatness is possible. And I've had mine for over 6 months.
4. Smaller number of songs and screenless interface mean that I interact with my iPod shuffle as music, not as a device. I'm barely aware of the object itself, and that's pretty wonderful; it becomes an extension of me, clipped to my shoulder strap or belt loop or shirt hem. And songs come out of it. Which is a bonus.5. As I walk along the streets of Cambridge, trying not to trip over jutting bricks in the uneven sidewalks, I will hold my shuffle between two fingers, navigating through songs (back, forward, forward), until I find one that I know is on there, and I'm navigating the sidewalks at same time, and it all becomes the same thing—the process of making my way through this world.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Ultimately, In Rainbows
I'm not sure how I messed this one up, but when Radiohead released their new album for pay-what-you-like download about a month ago, I somehow failed to get a pre-order code...or something? I just remember clicking and prodding at their psychedelic In Rainbows website on October 10, and being prompted to provide a code that I did not have. So I clicked some more. And prodded. And then, eventually, gave up.
AND THEN WAITED A WHOLE MONTH TO TRY AGAIN?
That's a pretty nonsensical logical leap, right there.
However, I am happy to report that, having finally downloaded the tracks, I'm floored. This is the music I was missing. I especially love "Reckoning," but really, all the tracks are fantastic. Considering that in the past month it's come to light that hey, maybe Radiohead WAS planning on eventually profiting from this album, I thought I'd take my ridiculous belatedness as an opportunity to say:
This music is wonderful.
And that's worth remembering.
AND THEN WAITED A WHOLE MONTH TO TRY AGAIN?
That's a pretty nonsensical logical leap, right there.
However, I am happy to report that, having finally downloaded the tracks, I'm floored. This is the music I was missing. I especially love "Reckoning," but really, all the tracks are fantastic. Considering that in the past month it's come to light that hey, maybe Radiohead WAS planning on eventually profiting from this album, I thought I'd take my ridiculous belatedness as an opportunity to say:
This music is wonderful.
And that's worth remembering.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Facebook Owns My Soul
Guys. Facebook owns my soul. And probably yours, too.
Today, nickd and I had a long conversation about Facebook's wonky privacy policies. I mean, sure. They'll let you untag photos and delete wallposts, so your friends or enemies can't see them. But will they let you delete your account permanently? No. Not without a lot of hassle, at least.
The problem is, I really do hand my soul over to Facebook—at least, the parts of it that can be translated into binary code. Facebook is truly my social "grid"; it's a world where all my friends are a click away. Most personal correspondence I've had in the past year has been through Facebook messages. And it's pretty scary to think that Facebook doesn't want that taken away from them.
It's not just their "privacy policy" that's at issue. It's their policy on what is private—what information belongs to you.
The whole model of Facebook only makes sense if they can monetize the information you give them, whether through targeted advertising or other strategies. But, as nickd pointed out, Facebook is leveling up—their new monetization system won't just use your information; it will use your friends. And it will use you, too, as a conduit of viral marketing, through Facebook's newly-announced shopping network, in which Facebook will track your online purchases and broadcast them to your friends, complete with coupons to seal the deal.
Okay. Scary.
Sure, Google already has most of this information. Google knows who I e-mail, where I go on the Internet, what I buy. But Google isn't telling all my friends. Facebook works as a social utility because it invades your privacy just enough. It's fun to have other people interested in your life, and it's certainly fun to peek into the lives of others. But whenever I'm on Facebook, I'm very aware that I'm on Facebook. It's my social grid, but it doesn't constitute my life grid. Once you start bringing in information from outside the closed representational framework of Facebook, you run into trouble.
And, I think it's safe to say: we're running into trouble.
Today, nickd and I had a long conversation about Facebook's wonky privacy policies. I mean, sure. They'll let you untag photos and delete wallposts, so your friends or enemies can't see them. But will they let you delete your account permanently? No. Not without a lot of hassle, at least.
The problem is, I really do hand my soul over to Facebook—at least, the parts of it that can be translated into binary code. Facebook is truly my social "grid"; it's a world where all my friends are a click away. Most personal correspondence I've had in the past year has been through Facebook messages. And it's pretty scary to think that Facebook doesn't want that taken away from them.
It's not just their "privacy policy" that's at issue. It's their policy on what is private—what information belongs to you.
The whole model of Facebook only makes sense if they can monetize the information you give them, whether through targeted advertising or other strategies. But, as nickd pointed out, Facebook is leveling up—their new monetization system won't just use your information; it will use your friends. And it will use you, too, as a conduit of viral marketing, through Facebook's newly-announced shopping network, in which Facebook will track your online purchases and broadcast them to your friends, complete with coupons to seal the deal.
Okay. Scary.
Sure, Google already has most of this information. Google knows who I e-mail, where I go on the Internet, what I buy. But Google isn't telling all my friends. Facebook works as a social utility because it invades your privacy just enough. It's fun to have other people interested in your life, and it's certainly fun to peek into the lives of others. But whenever I'm on Facebook, I'm very aware that I'm on Facebook. It's my social grid, but it doesn't constitute my life grid. Once you start bringing in information from outside the closed representational framework of Facebook, you run into trouble.
And, I think it's safe to say: we're running into trouble.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Hypnosis Through Stationery
Note to Self / World
1. Improve photo-taking skills with this series of 60-second tutorials.
2. Order unbelievably beautiful photo mini-cards from Moo.
3. Wait 2 weeks.
4. Become hypnotized by the gorgeous cacophony of tiny, brilliant calling cards strewn across desk.
5. Repeat.
1. Improve photo-taking skills with this series of 60-second tutorials.
2. Order unbelievably beautiful photo mini-cards from Moo.
3. Wait 2 weeks.
4. Become hypnotized by the gorgeous cacophony of tiny, brilliant calling cards strewn across desk.
5. Repeat.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
iPod Touch Jailbreak! Now Playing at an Apple Store Near You.
Friday night, I'm at the Apple store. There's really no reason for me to be there, except to ogle the iPod Touch, which I do, um...every week. So! I'm holding the iPod Touch in my hands, wondrous almost-iPhone instrument that it is, and then I notice something a little off-kilter. A little strange. There are too many icons on the home screen. And there's something called an "Installer." And then it hits me.
SOMEBODY JAILBROKE THE APPLE STORE iPOD TOUCH.
Image from Lifehacker. Screen wasn't quite this busy, but NES and the Installer were definitely there.
SOMEBODY JAILBROKE THE APPLE STORE iPOD TOUCH.
Image from Lifehacker. Screen wasn't quite this busy, but NES and the Installer were definitely there.
I can't even begin to explain how hilarious and awesome this was. Apple is trying so hard to keep third-party apps off the iPhone and the iPod touch, and the hacker community has taken Apple's efforts as a direct challenge to their skills, pride, and worth as human beings. They're fighting back—and how! Take the one-click jailbreak site, which I'm pretty sure was the method used by the mystery Apple store hacker. Just point your iPod touch /iPhone at the site, download a little program called AppSnap, and all of a sudden, your device is liberated. It's everything you always knew it could be. It's reached its potential. And that potential comes packaged with Apple's Eternal Hatred and Ire, and a Possibly Void Warranty.
Life is hard.
But anyway, so I was standing there, messing around with this liberated iPod touch, and I just could not believe my eyes, could not believe this was happening. It was uproarious, and yet, there was no one with whom to laugh uproariously!
So I did the second best thing. Against my better judgment, I told the Apple Store greeter about the jailbreak on my way out.
Okay. So I was a snitch.
But I have to say, the look of horror and dismay on that greeter's face was totally worth it.
Life is hard.
But anyway, so I was standing there, messing around with this liberated iPod touch, and I just could not believe my eyes, could not believe this was happening. It was uproarious, and yet, there was no one with whom to laugh uproariously!
So I did the second best thing. Against my better judgment, I told the Apple Store greeter about the jailbreak on my way out.
Okay. So I was a snitch.
But I have to say, the look of horror and dismay on that greeter's face was totally worth it.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Leopard+Minuteur=Productivity Magic!
A small but crazy useful discovery: remember how I posted a few days ago about the timed dashes productivity hack I've been using lately, with the help of a little program called Minuteur? And then remember how I installed Leopard on my PowerBook? And how Leopard has this feature called Spaces?
The most important thing about the timed dashes hack is that once your 15 minutes of work are over, you have to stop working; same with your 5 minutes of play. (Or whatever intervals you choose.) Sometimes, though, a little computerized alarm isn't enough to make you change course. But what if your work, or e-mail, were whisked out from under you? Wouldn't that be refreshing?
Totally possible with Spaces. The basic principle of Spaces is that you can have multiple virtual desktops, each containing a separate set of windows. When you activate a window that's in another virtual desktop, Leopard whisks you to that space, automatically leaving the other space behind. The key to this is the little stopwatch app for Macs, Minuteur, that I've been using ever since reading about it on 43folders. When time's up and it rings, the Minuteur app automatically "activates," or becomes the active application. So as long as you keep it in a space you're not working in, when time's up, Minuteur will whisk you away from your workspace and into wake-up call space! If this sounds complicated, it's not. If it sounds magical, then that's more like it.
The most important thing about the timed dashes hack is that once your 15 minutes of work are over, you have to stop working; same with your 5 minutes of play. (Or whatever intervals you choose.) Sometimes, though, a little computerized alarm isn't enough to make you change course. But what if your work, or e-mail, were whisked out from under you? Wouldn't that be refreshing?
Totally possible with Spaces. The basic principle of Spaces is that you can have multiple virtual desktops, each containing a separate set of windows. When you activate a window that's in another virtual desktop, Leopard whisks you to that space, automatically leaving the other space behind. The key to this is the little stopwatch app for Macs, Minuteur, that I've been using ever since reading about it on 43folders. When time's up and it rings, the Minuteur app automatically "activates," or becomes the active application. So as long as you keep it in a space you're not working in, when time's up, Minuteur will whisk you away from your workspace and into wake-up call space! If this sounds complicated, it's not. If it sounds magical, then that's more like it.