Suddenly the silly little word achieves a whole new dimension…
(via Booklust)
book
Bad Internet, Good Internet
Andres over at Technollama is reading “The Cult of the Amateur”, by Andrew Keen, the Internet critic. I have been avoiding commenting on this book and on the author. Lots of other have been there already. Actually I will probably eventually get around to reading the book. Anyway, Andres notes that Keen has a bone to pick with the web and provides this Keen quotation which I could help but comment upon:
“When I look at today’s Internet, I mostly see cultural and ethical chaos. I see the eruption of rampant intellectual property theft, extreme pornography, sexual promiscuity, plagiarism, gambling, contempt for order, intellectual inanity, crime, a culture of anonymity, hatred toward authority, incessant spam, and a trash heap of user-generated-content. I see a chaotic humans arrangement with few, if any, formal social pacts.”
Well of course. I agree totally with Keen. Thats the beauty of the Internet – you get what you look for. Keen went looking for garbage and appears shocked when he found it. Big deal. I can do the same in any city in the world from Bombay to Boston from Seoul to Stockholm. What he then does is attempts to explain the world from the empirical garbage he picks up. This is not a reflection of the Internet but only an expression of Keen’s Internet related interests.
Scientific Impact and Scientific Books
Maybe it’s the approach of the first winter snows or maybe it’s just the most recent PhD cartoon (probably a combination of factors). But I began to think about my scientific impact.
Jorge Cham PhD Comics
It’s been a year since I defended my thesis so I guess a little thought on the topic may not be entirely out of place. Since 1999 I have written over 40 academic texts (journal and conference articles, book chapters, reports and more). Besides my PhD I have also acted as editor to a book, taught an endless amount of classes and given countless guest lectures.
Despite all this “scientific” or “academic” production my impact on the scientific community is negligible. Ok so I realize that my field is not high profile. But I have the sneaking suspicion that the impact of my work is not what it should be or could be.
If we choose to set aside arguments that my impact is low because I am unreadable – since they provide no help – then there may be another reason.
The focus of scientific/academic work has become the journal article. We are not measured in research but in publication. The problem with this system is that it creates a desire (intentional or unintentional) to manipulate the system. What we have seen over the last thirty years is the explosion of the number of journals and the publication hungry academic is always in the market for yet another place to deliver an article to.
The purpose of the journal was to provide an avenue where scientific work could be published quickly and in a focused manner. Well while some journals have longer time-to-print than books this is no longer an advantage. And the dance between authors, editors and reviewers has become so stylized that it resembles a kabuki theater (complex, ornate & beautiful but incomprehensible).
So where am I going with this? Not very far. The process of academic work entails journal publication – we are locked into this system. But to achieve true recognition and impact, in my field, I think your either need to be a cartoonist – or to write books.
Books as marketing channels
A pet hate of mine is people who make notes in library books. I just cannot understand the arrogance of some people who are prepared to borrow a book and then mess it up. It’s not about cost it’s about a lack of interest in other peoples property and a lack of consideration for the next reader.
But now it’s not only the lenders doing it. The Guardian reports that public libraries in the UK will be using books as a direct marketing channel. The project will insert advertising into library books and provide libraries with much needed extra funding.
Up to 500,000 inserts a month are due to be handed out by libraries in Essex, Somerset, Bromley, Leeds and Southend.
The plan is being run by the direct marketing company Howse Jackson, whose business development director Mark Jackson said the company was “very proud” of what he described as “a brand new channel” for direct marketing.
Obviously Mark Jackson is more of a marketer than a reader. Guy Daines (director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) was dismayed by the scheme.
(via Lex Ferenda)
Notes from prison library books
Jumbledpile has a Flickr set of things found in library books at the prison library. The pictures and notes are very moving. They are well worth a visit, a bit of voyeurism into an unknown world…
my favorite
(via Boing Boing)
Bad Planning
Most annoying. Here is a list of events I have been invited to attend. I want to attend but I will miss them all. Basically this is the worst case of bad planning I have ever experienced. But if you happen to be in the right place (as opposed to me) then I would recommend that you attend.
November 8th Makt och motstånd i den digitala tidsåldern, (Swedish text by Christopher Kullenberg can be downloaded here), Room 325, Annedalsseminariet. A text seminar at the Resistance Studies Network, Annedalsseminariet, Göteborg. This seminar will focus on the question concerning the conditions for resistance in the digital era of information technologies and surveillance. The seminar will discuss the shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control, and explore the relationships between power and resistance. I will be in Stockholm.
On 17 November: Who Makes and Owns Your Work? A multipart event in Stockholm addressing sharing, distribution and intellectual propert, Årsta Folkets Hus in Stockholm. I will be in Göteborg.
On the 5th December there will be a Surveillance seminar in Göteborg (room C430, Humanisten) but I will be in Norway.
Never mention the technology
A few posts back I talked about travel and was stupid enough to mention the vulnerability of technology while traveling. I could do this because fundamentally I am not a superstitious person and I was speaking about the risk of forgetting a vital part of technology like a cable. Naturally things like this do not go unpunished and I was (almost) instantly struck by lightening.
The keyboard and pad to my macbook pro just stopped working. Using an external mouse and keyboard worked fine – basically a hardware error. But I was far away from rescue disks, backup systems, external hardware, support and any kind of help. Basically I was screwed.
So I spent my days traveling with dead technology, wishing it to work but to no avail. Fortunately I was back at home base (Göteborg) on Monday. Major backups, handing in the laptop to the repairman and then attempting to get my old laptop into some kind of working order. My old one is very unstable and insecure no matter what I do to it.
Getting a computer into shape takes time. All the minor adjustments that turns it from a mass market product into a comfortable work environment is a slow process. Eventually I managed to get to sleep only to wake up two hours later for no reason. Returning to sleep never worked. After tossing and turning I succumbed to the temptation and went back to adjusting my laptop.
Sometime during the night I began to think about an idea of my former professor, Bo Dahlbom. He used to claim that we were becoming a nomadic society. Naturally he was referring to a segment of society and generalizing. Even though it’s mostly by train I am beginning to feel like a nomadic tribesman. But there is a problem with the nomad analogy.
The nomads are a self-reliant group, their technology is durable, lightweight and basic. If they cannot carry it, service it or fix it then they will not use it. The same cannot be said of the tecchie nomads who need a well functioning infrastructure around them to be able to carry out the semblance of what they (we?) would call a normal life.
On the train platform I saw my first iPhone – sweet!
Really really annoying
The keyboard and mouse to my nice shiney new MacBook Pro. Everything else works but it is pretty useless without the input devices. When I use an external mouse & keyboard everything is OK. So now I have to hand in my little machine to be repaired and I know that this will take a long time. Anything longer than half a day is a annoyingly long time.
I am in Norwary now. Tomorrow I am back in Gothenburg and backup the machine. Then hand it in to the repairman. Then its off to Væsterås and Lund. I will be back in Gothenburg by the end of the week, but I wonder were my laptop will be?
All I can say is damn, damn, damn, damn and damn!
Experiences of a semi-nomadic lifestyle
By accepting my new position at Lund’s university I knew I was also accepting a great deal of travel. Before actually beginning the plan was that I would spend 2-3 days a week in Lund, two days in Göteborg, where I maintain a small part of my previous work. Most weekends would be spent in Norway with my girlfriend.
The plan naturally required living in Lund. This turned out to be rather difficult since Lund is a university town (small population – loads of students). Despite this I managed to find a flat with a flatmate. It’s a rather expensive university accommodation – but on the bright side it is in the center of town.
All this was easy enough to plan and predict.
Then came the surprises. Since I spend so little time in any one place:
Buying food for longer periods almost does not work. So I end up eating out a lot more. This is expensive, unhealthy and rather dull in the long run.
There is no point in ordering a morning paper in the letterbox so reading a newspaper becomes a luxury.
The gym is becoming a thing of the past. Running is the activity of choice. However carting around running gear (in particular the shoes) quickly fills any small carrier bag.
Any book, cd, dvd (whatever) you need or want will always be somewhere else.
Travel requires two things organization and patience, the former before and the latter during. Frequent travel requires much more of the same. Missing the bus to work is annoying missing the train is F##cking annoying & embarrassing. I have missed two in the last months.
Since I have always liked words of advice like “Keep your powder dry”, “go west, young man”, and plastics is the future (or something similar in the film The Graduate) here is some advice for others – based upon what I have learned.
– Never take the window seat on trains. In winter the heating is on this side, in summer the heat and light is annoying and if the train is crowded leaving the seat is difficult.
– Extra underwear must be kept at all locations.
– Duplicate (or triplicate) necessities. Shaving kit, after shave, aspirin, running shoes, notebooks, teas, etc etc.
– Make sure you have a bag with all your technical kit. Do not unpack this bag. Keep it close to you at all times. Clean underwear is nothing compared to a mobile with an empty battery.
Once you start planning and organising things tend to work themselves out rather nicely… Until the next ugly surprise…
Another idiotic regulatory attempt
The latest idiotic proposed legislation comes from Italy. The proposal is that all blogs and websites need to be registered (and taxed).
Beppe Grillo writes
Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man , undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement.
The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.
Oh my God, Lets start with the easy stuff.
First, How will they intend to police this law. The law can apply to all Italian sites. What is an Italian site? Is it:
- a site with an Italian domain
- a site on a server in Italy
- a site in Italian
Second, what happens when the site is based in several locations with data pulled from several sources? Do they get a tax reduction?
Third, what is a website? Can you define it legally? Is there a difference between the site, server and domain? What about:
- A facebook profile
- A blog on blogger
- An advert on ebay
- A wikipedia page
- A flickr profile
These may be unique individual websites – but they can also be seen as part of a larger domain.
Fourth, what about free speech rights? Basically an unregistered website would be in violation of the law but would/should the reaction be to close down the site? What happens if a newspaper does not register can they be closed down?
Fifth, administration. How much money and resource can be used to police a law such as this? Can the revenue it brings in even begin to cover the investigative resources required? No of course not. Imaging attempting to chase every Italian blog. How do you know when they are Italian?
Proposals to regulate the Internet come at regular intervals. Often they are barely thought through and will collapse before they even reach the enactment stage. Some laws on Internet regulation have been enacted but are then thankfully forgotten by those who should enforce them.
In the end proposals such as these show that regulators seem to lack even a basic understanding of the technology which most of us use. They also lack a fundamental modern historical approach to regulation. It is really a case of being condemned to repeat the past since we cannot remember it. All the earlier crappy failed attempts to regulate the Internet have failed but since the people proposing regulation have no memory of this we are doomed to see the same mistakes repeated again and again.
At best this provides a form of light relief and humor.
(via BoingBoing)