I would love to blog the defence but for natural reasons I will be unable to participate in this way. My focus will be on listening, interpretating and meeting my opponents questions.
If anyone (maybe you Kalle?) wants to bring a laptop I can arrange a guest account to the wireless and a password to this blog too… Otherwise you shall all have to be patient.
Not really too nervous yet. I think I am in deep denial…
I think itâ??s time to choose theme music for the actual defence. Should it be something classic impressive that makes the blood roar (like Carmina Burana) or maybe classic snappy like Carmen. Or should it be monotonous drum & bassâ?¦ maybe it should be more rebellious punk, maybe even Sex Pistolsâ?¦
Or why not Hollywood cheesy like â??Eye of the Tigerâ?? with images of Rocky Balboa training in the original rocky movie?
It is unfortunate that we as a culture focus almost totally on surviving stressful situations. This can be seen as a natural reaction since without survival there is nothing. But the unfortunate side effect is that we forget that the stressful experience will become an experience â?? something to be remembered. What kind of memories can we create if we are fixated on surviving?
What, you may ask, should we be doing instead? I think that we should approach stressful experiences with a smile and the knowledge that this will become a defining moment in our lives. Ordinary mundane episodes in a life are quickly forgotten but the stressful situations live with us, they receive a disproportionate segment of our minds and self-image. Disproportionate in the sense of time since, in general, most of life is mundane while stress is short lived.
In order to change this I am going to make an effort to enjoy my defence. The stress of being interrogated, question, probed and queried is to be put aside. In its place I will view this as an enjoyable experience, albeit an exciting one, but still an enjoyable one. Instead of seeing this as dental surgery â?? all pain and discomfort, I choose to understand the PhD defence as a trip to the amusement park. Wild and frightening rides designed to get the adrenalin flowing but remaining within the realm of amusement.
Itâ??s Friday. This is my last weekend before I defend. I have not been thinking a lot about what happens after Friday but I have naturally been curious about it. Previously, I have asked a people about the actual experience. Most of them seem only to have vague memories of the actual defence. This is not because they defended so long ago as not to remember. It seems to be common not to remember much of the actual defence. It might be the stress or the focus of the occasion but the result is that the audience seems to have a clearer memory than the defender.
Things get more complicated when asking people what the PhD feels like after the defence. Once the idea has sunk in, what does it change? Obviously the shiny new PhD qualifies the holder to apply for new positions, apply for research funding and opens doors within academia to rooms which were previously off-limits.
Despite this, the people I have spoken to report a range of emotions of what the PhD feels like. Everything from â??nothing changedâ?? to â??everything is differentâ??. My preference is towards â??everything changesâ??. The PhD is more than a formal exam and an entrance into the academic guild it is also a effort of great personal importance â?? at least I feel that my experience is this and I may feel a bit cheated if nothing changed.
Tomorrow I fly to Umeå to lecture at the cool and happening Humlab. My presentation will be on my PhD thesis. This is a bit strange in one way to present my thesis before it has been defended but the Umeå date was set before the final date of the presentation and I now see it as an excellent opportunity to give a focused presentation of my work.
For those of you who would like to be there but are not in UmeÃ¥ â??the revolution will be televisedâ??, or rather the presentation will be streamed online (this link will be active tomorrow at 15.00). I told you they were cool in UmeÃ¥.
In 2000 a report on IT related crime was released by the BRÃ?. BRÃ? is the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rÃ¥det – BrÃ¥). Since first reading this report I have been very critical of its presentation of gender in relation to computer crime.
When I began this blog in 2005 it was only natural that I would quote this report in an entry and air my criticism at the same time. So in a post entitled Boys, girls & computers (in November 2005) you can read:
In a report on IT related Crime (XXX & XXX) from The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention from the year 2000 we find the wierd and wonderful quote:
â??Män misstänks för dataintrÃ¥ng, de manipulerar, raderar och stjäl program, filer eller data. När kvinnor misstänks som gärningsmän handlar det mestadels om interna dataintrÃ¥ng â?? obehörig registerupplysning och radering av filer, program eller data. Endast tre kvinnor misstänks för databedrägeri.â??
Källa: IT-relaterad brottslighet, BR�-rapport 2000:2
Loosely translated: Men are suspected of breaking into computer systems, they manipulate, erase and steal programs, files or data. When women are suspected it is mostly internally accessing computer systems – unauthorised looking at files and erasing files, programs or data. Only three women are suspected of computer fraud.
The authors therefore state that men are actively carrying out manly tasks of destruction while women are driven by curiousity to peek into files. Men â??break, manipulate, erase and stealâ?? while women look and erase. Even to the most untrained this is a joke. Men are doers who do macho stuff while women are either driven by curiousity or erase (by incompetence?).
I realise that the report is from 2000 butâ?¦ come on!! Can they have written this with a straight face?
Since then the post has been peacefully hanging around the database waiting for a reader. Today it solicited a reaction. An email arrived from someone claiming to be one of the authors of the report (it is not an official BRÃ? email address). I will reproduce the email in Swedish so as not to be accused of interpreting the content.
Hej Klang!
Jag såg att du hade citerat våran Brå-rapport på ituniv.se för ungefär ett år sedan. Jag blev en aning fundersam över ditt sätt att tolka vad vi skrivit i rapporten. Så jag tänkte att jag kanske kunde förklara hur du ska tolka det du citerade.Vi påstår inget, vi redovisar ett resultat från en undersökning av polisanmäld brottslighet. Det vill säga den delen av brottsligheten som kommer till polisens kännedom. En del av dessa polisanmälningar innehöll uppgifter om en misstänkt gärningsmän. Vi sammanställde dessa uppgifter och fick fram ett antal kvinnor som misstänktes för brott. Så vad vi skriver är endast ett resultat av vad som framkom i undersökningen.
Således gör vi inga slustater om skillnader mellan mäns och kvinnors brottslighet, det råkade bara falla sig så att de kvinnor som fanns med i undersökning misstänktes för interna dataintrång.Jag hoppas att jag förklarat så att du förstår vad du har läst. Och du, när du citerar något bör du ta med allt som står i avsnitt du tanker citera.
Mvh
The letter begins â??Hello Klangâ?? and goes on to explain that I have misinterpreted the report and the quote. The writer goes on to explain that the authors of the report were not drawing any conclusions but simply reporting. It ends with on a condescending note explaining how one should handle quotes.
To which I replied:
Din förklaring hjälper inte alltför mycket. Min kritik dÃ¥ – och nu – handlar om det vinklade sättet ni okritiskt presenterar er data.
I detta stycke som jag citerar kan man läsa att kvinnor begår brott på grund av nyfikenhet eller okunskap medans männens brottslighet är aktiv och kunnigt.
När en undersökning visar resultat som verkar helt skumma har man ett ansvar som forskare/författare/utredare att problematisera de resultat man får. Erat sätt att presentera siffrorna ger den oreflekterande läsaren en felaktig könsbild i relation till brottslighet.
Tonen i ert sprÃ¥kbruk i rapporten förstärker tydligt budskapet om kvinnans tekniska inkompetens. Du skriver i ditt mail: “Vi pÃ¥stÃ¥r inget, vi redovisar ett resultat…” jag hÃ¥ller inte med. Genom att skriva pÃ¥stÃ¥r man (i detta fall ni) nÃ¥got. Genom att citatet finns i en BRÃ? rapport sÃ¥ är det inte lösa ord utan semi-officiell sanning. Era ord skapar en verklighet som andra förhÃ¥ller sig till. Det sistnämnda kanske lÃ¥ter dramatiskt och överdrivet – framförallt i detta fall – men som utredare bör man inte anse att man endast rapporterar neutralt och sakligt.
Neutralitet och saklighet är något man strävar efter men det kan knappast uppnår.
Jag anser att ni har fel, att ni borde tänkt igenom vad siffrorna betyder och, framför allt, att ni borde uttryckt er på ett helt annat sätt.
Basically I criticise the authors again for their gender-biased report which shows men as active and knowledgeable, while women are ignorant, passive and nosey. I go on to state:
1) Researchers must question and problematise results which seem odd.
2) Presenting results without questioning creates, in this case, a slanted or biased view of gender in relation to IT crime.
3) The tone in the report re-enforces the gender bias.
4) The claim in the email that they are not interpreting but simply reporting is both wrong and harmful. Every time one writes anything it is an act of interpretation.
5) The presentation or interpretation in a report issued by BRÃ? ensures that the words are taken seriously.
6) Neutrality and objectivity are things writers should strive for but are not attainable goals.
I conclude by saying that I believe they are wrong in their report, they should have reflected upon what the numbers meant and, above all else, expressed themselves in a completely different manner.
I have edited out personal names so to enhance the principle discussion rather than those involved. Besides the important lack of gender understanding, the point I want to push across is the idea that a report can be neutral. All writing is an act of interpretation. All reading is an act of interpretation. The fact that one of the authors contacts me to “teach” me how to interprete his work demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of the role of the official report as a political and social artefact. If this had come from the writer of a lesser work I would have ignored it. But when the admonishment to interprete official sources in the “correct” manner comes from an official source my feeling of concern grows rapidly.
There is a danger when we accept at face value what we read (even in official sources). This danger becomes even more serious when the author attempts to lecture, teach or scold the reader for his or her interpretation.
My thesis is on the Creative Commons blog so I guess that my 15 minutes have started… Sweet…
Do you have a guilty conscious about books you should have read? I do. Most of the time I can ignore this little voice but every so often the voice shouts too loud to be ignored.
One book which I thought I should read when it came out in 2000 was Monbiotâ??s â??The Age of Consent: A manifesto for a new world orderâ?? but somehow I always had other stuff to do.
Then I began reading Monbiotâ??s writing online. He posts some (all?) of his newspaper articles online a short while after they have appeared in the newspapers. His â??Children of the Machineâ?? (2006) is an insightful understanding of how RFID technology will slowly come to be accepted and to control us.
Anyway I bought his Age of Consent and I was not disappointed. Here is a man who writes about the complicated hypocrisies of world economics in a manner that is understandable, entertaining and at the same time provoking.
His final goal is to provoke the reader into action. But he is aware that he must move the reader from ignorance, to understanding, to agreement before he gets anyone to act.
Some short quotes:
We must accept that democracy will always be something of a mess. Attempting to tidy it up too much could mean subordinating diversity to universalism and the individual consciousness to the general will to such an extent that we may establish the preconditions not for freedom but for captivity. We must leave gaps between the building blocks, in case we accidentally build a wall. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 115)
Throughout this manifesto, I have sought to suggest ways in which we can use the strengths of our opponents to our advantage, and it seems to me that the roaming hunger of corporations is another asset we can turn to our account. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p)
â?¦the curtailment of the world-eating mathematically impossible system we call capitalism, and its replacement with a benign and viable means of economic exchangeâ?¦ (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 238)
I end this with the same words with which he ends his book:
Well? What are you waiting for?
It seems that my universityâ??s idea of good IT service includes the fact that the web is down at least one weekend a month. This is:
Annoying, irritating, frustrating, infuriating, appalling, alarming, displeasing, distressing, galling, disturbing, aggravating, exasperating,
Not to mention:
Unpleasant, disagreeable, cumbersome, inconvenient, unwieldy, offensive, bothersome, incommodious, tiresome, troublesome, vexatious
Why donâ??t I move off-campus? The blog revolves around my research interests (vaguely and broadly defined) so I do like the fact that it is connected to my workplace. But if this continues I shall take my frustration elsewhere.
But the service (?) is back so at least I should stop abusing the thesaurus…
After having attended too many conferences where the attitude is all about presenting it is very, very nice to be at a conference which emphasis discussion. In addition to this I have been able to present my own paper yesterday so today my focus is on listening to, and discussing with, others. The general â??feelingâ?? of the IFIP-TC9 is friendly and the members are really interested in the issues that are the focus of the conference.
Besides receiving probing questions on my own presentation I have listed to presentations by many of the people I read. In addition to this I have had the opportunity discuss informally with lots of interesting people.