Doctor Daisy

I’m proud to share the link to the essay I recently wrote in response to Dan Gillmor’s “Principles of New Media.” It has been published as part of the publius project, which is a Berkman Center blog-site featuring “essays and conversations about constitutional moments on the Net.”

Having Gillmor as my advisor last summer when I was at Harvard for the OII Summer Doctoral Programme was inspiring, and it was great to get his feedback on my dissertation project. As I’ve been writing the past 8 months or so, I have often been skeptical about what new media genres can really do in terms of social change, but at the heart of my work will always be an appreciation for the writing and recovering that is happening in New Orleans quite independently of established channels.

New Orleanians like myself are a passionate people very much attached to our humid bohemian city, and the more my scholarly work and their blogs can remind the world that “we are not OK,” the more I hope people will take notice.

I hope you enjoy the essay and do leave comments!

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Been watching the webcasts of the plenary sessions at the Berkman@10 conference all day. Good stuff–some familiar from my 2 weeks there last summer for the Oxford Internet Institute–but I’m most excited about the speed with which I’m moving between windows and tabs. Haven’t juggled chatting, twittering, flickring, listening, checking email, searching, and posting to Blackboard for my online students since last July!

Daithí is there and already has some informative summaries up on his blog.

OK back to it. Also love the twitter feed here, since it seems we broke hashtags.org

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Still wishing I could make it up to Harvard for Berkman@10, but it’s nice to know that they’ve launched their own YouTube channel where I can catch up on their most recent conversations as well as a great historical overview!

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I really wish I had the time to get up to Harvard for “The Future of the Internet” conference May 15-16, 2008, but now that I’m 80 days away from my anticipated defense date, I have to focus on things like producing pages, making edits, and figuring out where I’ll be living in July!

The planned breakout sessions described here sound amazing, so I can’t wait to read the liveblogging, wiki edits, and Twitter streams that come out of them!

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I was not at all expecting to receive my XO laptop before Christmas since I ordered it a little later than most, so imagine my surprise when a loud knock came at the door this evening. As soon as I saw the box, I screamed, “It’s my XO!” and I put everything down. Sadly, I really don’t think I will start playing with it until after the holidays and MLA. We’re traveling soon and I’ve got too much writing and thinking to do before my interviews.

I hope also that the T-Mobile hotspot subscription comes in by then so I can get Starbucks drinkers to hop on board the OLPC initiative.

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Like D Weinberger, I had not noticed that dopplr went live last week. I’ve been enjoying the service since July and, because I hope to see a lot of travel in my future, I plan to use it to continue to keep up with my contacts in the new year.

And, again like DW, I have to say that this “spotlight on dopplr” is not one to miss!

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When I was at Harvard this summer, I was introduced to a slew of social networking tools. I joined Facebook a couple weeks before the session started and have come to use it on a daily basis to keep up with my SDP and other academic contacts. Now that applications have been added, I can also have my blog, my Flickr page, my del.icio.us account, and my Dopplr account all feed into my profile.

If you’re not familiar with Dopplr, it is an invitation-only travel schedule site, so you can organize your trips as well as “share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers that you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit.” I know some folks have privacy issues and do not necessarily want to publish all the places they are going, but so far I like it, especially since I have friends all over the place!

You can read more about it on the Dopplr blog, but my absolute favorite thing about it is this:

When I type in New Orleans, it tells me, “We know about just one place in the world that matches what you’ve typed: New Orleans, LA, United States.” However, when I type in Tampa, it hesitates: “We think you mean Tampa, FL, United States. However, there are 2 places that could match what you’ve typed.”

More reinforcement that NOLA is my one and only!

P.S. If you want an invite, leave me a comment or email me.

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I’ve been going back and forth about participating in this program–not because I don’t believe in the OLPC initiative, but because I felt that I’d only be purchasing it for novelty sake. Do I really need another computer?

Still, its size and “cute” factor are part of its charm, and it was brilliant for the creators to offer this chance to the public in the US and Canada to own one as well as donating one now that the machine is being mass-produced. It helps, too, that I did fall in love with it when I visited the OLPC offices this summer.

I also held back making my donation/purchase til now because I felt I’d still travel with my Powerbook anyway because I intuitively know all the folders and documents I reference when working on my dissertation. However, when I found out about the year of free T-mobile hotspot access, I realized I could save all my writing as Google documents and work from the wifi XO computer. But I didn’t reach for my wallet until today when I read this part of the Terms and Conditions:

Neither OLPC Foundation nor One Laptop per Child, Inc. has service facilities, a help desk or maintenance personnel in the United States or Canada. Although we believe you will love your XO laptop, you should understand that it is not a commercially available product and, if you want help using it, you will have to seek it from friends, family, and bloggers. One goal of the G1G1 initiative is to create an informal network of XO laptop users in the developed world, who will provide feedback about the utility of the XO laptop as an educational tool for children, participate in the worldwide effort to create open-source educational applications for the XO laptop, and serve as a resource for those in the developing world who seek to optimize the value of the XO laptop as an educational tool. A fee based tech support service will be available to all who desire it. We urge participants in the G1G1 initiative to think of themselves as members of an international educational movement rather than as “customers.”

I find that language fantastic and if there is anything I want to do in life, it’s to be part of a movement that advocates using technology in education and increasing access world-wide. If someone sees me with the laptop, they will surely ask about it and I can tell them all about Nicholas Negroponte’s mission. Even when I briefly mentioned this project in my Expository Writing class a couple of weeks ago, several students emailed me after to find out more about it and some have gone on to research open access user software for their final projects.

So I am off to place my order!

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I’m happy to announce that my meta-blogging meta-narrative has been published in Computers and Composition Online. The entire Special Issue about Online Research, Writing, and Citation Practices can be found here and my webtext is available here.

I am not well-versed in Dreamweaver, but I do know that this is a much “easier-on-the eyes” version of the piece, which was first submitted in FrontPage. I know I have a lot to learn about navigation structures and I actually thought the whole left bar column would be fixed, but I guess that means the reader really has to finish each section before they can move onto the next!

Jeez, am I a linear kind of gal or what?

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NOTE: I’m pretty sure that blogging will be at a minimum this semester too, so if you’re looking for links to what I’m reading, check del.icio.us.

And repeated praises to the 2007 SDP experience–without my fellow Internet and Society contacts to bounce ideas off of via gtalk or Facebook, I think I’d be forever locked in my library carrel! It’s funny, but I think I appreciate that time more and more every day. While I never want to set foot in White Hall dorms again, I’m eager for whatever follow-up conference travel we organize, either at Harvard or Oxford!

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Thank you, Ismael for blogging so quickly and articulately!

My time at Harvard was fantastic and while at times it felt over my head on the policy and IP fronts, I learned so much about what it means to be an internet scholar, how to cross interdisciplinary boundaries, and when to “go meta.”

I know I am behind on writing up my thoughts on my own presentation from last week, but suffice it to say that I was reminded at how unique a story I have to tell and that the more I celebrate New Orleans and the people there rebuilding the city with their online actions and words, the better. I had not thought such a global and distinguished group of fellow PhD students would be as interested in my qualitative work, but I was wrong. They even recommended some quantitative tools in case I do want to go in that direction.

Most importantly, I was introduced [by Marcus Foth] to the term “action research” and I think it may be the way I want to frame my dissertation. I don’t know if this tactic will require me spending more time in NOLA, interviewing, etc., but I feel that any attempt to write about post-Katrina New Orleans and the self-organizing efforts are happening vis-a-vis the Internet requires me to think about how my work can both contribute to knowledge and successful change.

Dan Gillmor and Steve Schifferes were my “assigned” tutors, and their feedback was invaluable as was the entire 2-week experience.

I promise more posts and photos to come!

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Yesterday we had the honor of visiting the MIT Media Lab. I’m not really a Second Life person [I think many of you know I live by the slogan “I don’t play games”], so I was thrilled when we were given the option to checkout their Lifelong Kindergarten lab and then head over to the One Laptop Per Child office.

While we are a group of 30+ PhD students from all over the world, check out the difficulty we had opening up the machine! And for a more detailed description of the project, check out this CBS video.

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In session with Henry Jenkins right now and here’s the first video up for discussion:

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I still have a lot to say about my presentation at Harvard a few days ago however my back pain is limiting my ability to sit and type comfortably.

My notes on the sessions are in WORD right now, but I can sum up the copyright session thus far:

Pressing a button to send something to someone else, something that isn’t your content, requires thought about copyright!

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Our summer program wiki has gone live!

Also, some of my fellow program participants have been blogging the sessions quite articulately: Daithi and Ismael, both of which appear on the SDP2007 newsfeed.

Finally, check out what the Potter fans among us have to look forward to in Harvard [aka Hogwarts] Square tomorrow night!

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Points made at Day 2 of OIISDP:

The worst thing anyone can do is not acknowledge the time issue when working in internet studies; acknowledge those changes and that the new waves may not yet be measurable

Foreground the audience’s reaction/grapple with it directly/disclose the limitations

“Future trends” becomes an obligatory section after you’ve given your detailed segment of time

Remember that you are actually living in the era which potentially makes the work [if reflective enough] > historical overviews from years past

Technorati Tags: sdp2007

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Last week I was frantically printing out readings for the highlight of my summer: Oxford Internet Institute’s Summer Doctoral Programme. I was also prepping myself for 2 weeks away from my 2 favorite mammals. After some emotional goodbyes, I left on Sunday.

After arriving to hotter than usual Boston and learning that my dorm room was on the fourth floor, no elevator and no air conditioner, I was very cranky. But I washed my face then went to meet the group for drinks at Cambridge Common.

It looks like there are 30+ of us doctoral students interested in, most generally speaking, internet studies. Everyone is very nice and laid back and it will be great to hear more about all of the dissertation projects since in my own department at USF I am the only one focusing on computers and writing. I still feel that my project may be more evocative than others, but during our opening session today I could see how it connected to the general idea of how the internet impacts our everyday life and culture, how trust is created online, and this thing we often call virtual communities.

I have more notes from Day 1 will have to share them for later. Day 2 is about to begin!

Check out our Flickr photo pool to see what were up to…

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