While there are a ton of topics I would like to blog about, time does not permit. I have been in (DDM) deep-disseration-mode which leaves me little time but to write on the diss. The chapter I am now working on is about hacker creativity and selfhood which I explore in relation to humor. If you are interested to read about why hackers are so funny and how hacker humor functions to constitute individual originality and collectivety, read on here.
Hacker Humor, What is It All About?
uh-oh & ahh-ha and the politics of free speech
Fieldwork invariably produces a set of highly charged emotional responses that I think can be fairly characterized as those which produce the
On Representation
So I have basically stopped posting on my research blog, instead posting articles on free software, hackers, IP etc, on Geniza. I prefer the layout and since there are a number of us posting, I get to bear the fruit of the labor of others.
I just posted two pieces that both deal with the question of representation. One is an article that announces Linux is no longer fringe or kinda-fringe, but fully mainstream. While Linux is mainstreaming, piracy has not only been aligned with terrorism but now is compared to a drug war: (“”There are a lot of similarities with the drug war,” said David Israelite, chairman of the U.S. Justice Department’s Intellectual Property Task Force. “You never really are going to eliminate the problem, but what you hope to do is stop its growth.”). And while piracy is being fought with the massive resources, Mr Gates is of course trying as best he can to downgrade the mainstream appeal of the Free Culture movement by tagging it as communist.
On a smaller scale, my friend Rex is re-designing his blogand I can’t but help think that it reflects a Jack Handy’s Deep Thought aesthetic.
Century of the Self
So so so I really want to see Century of the Self not only because I am obssessed about questions of selfhood but I also love documentaries especially really long ones, that don’t skip on the details. I think it is a shame that it is so difficult to see documentaries in the sense that they only play in artsy type film houses, are not on regular TV all that often, and are not readily available in your local video store. I guess I should check out netflix and see if it worth signing up and watching a handful of the d-mentaries per month.
I think it is also a shame that the world of documentary film making is not an integral component of academia especially teachinbg. For example, any good ethnography should have a corollary documentary. That is how the emotive, visual force of your material can really come through. There is a chance that I may pair up with a filmmaker who I met in Brazil while he was making to do a documentary on a large hacker con What the Hack but we will see if we can pull it off. The timing of the con is not all that ideal for me because I think I may be teaching then but I may be able to change my schedule if indeed we manage to get permisison to do it. Now, getting permission from a group of hackers who value decentralizing authority will be interesting.
Academic Bloggers –> survey
If you are an academic blogger, there is a survey worth filling out. Below is some information from the student, studying at the University of Chicago who is writing her masters (long paper?) on the topic of academic blogging. I am not sure if I should even fill it out because I tend to use my blog as my escape from academics though from time to time I can’t hold back and write something quasi academic.
Hi. My name is Tina Huang, and I’m a Masters student at the University of Chicago. I am currently conducting a study on academics and their opinions on blogging. I am examining how people perceive this new Internet medium and how beneficial this new technology is to the academic community. If you are an academic and you either read blogs or write a blog pertaining at all to your field of study, please take some time to complete this survey. All information collected in this survey will remain confidential. If you have any questions or concerns, please email me. Thanks!
The Essence of Dissertation Writing
I was once told that writing a dissertation is 90% enthusiasm. I think the number is more like 78% but anyways…
I would like to add that it is also an exercise in containment and a fight against boredom.
I just finished writing a 40 page “dry run” of what will only be like 20 pages in my dissertation. This excess of information partly has to do with the nature of my research which is data-heavy but usually we collect too much data and are forced in our disseration to cut out a good chunk of info and complexity in favor for something that is more manageable and contained.
Also I am pretty excited about my topic but I would be fibbing if I did not admit that there are times I just grow somewhat bored of it. I mean thinking about this for 5 years straight has its consequences.
Chutney Glow, Part II
I just wrote the first 7 pages of my dissertation! Ok, so I have already written like at least 1/3 of this book-length paper (maybe more?? it depends on how long it wll be) but now I am starting from the beginning. It is exciting and strange. Like I have spent the last 7 years building and preparing for this moment and while I am sure my auric field is one of glowing chutney, it is also somewhat less dramatic that I thought it might be.
You see it is really perplexing, this dissertation thing. On the one hand, I can’t figure out if my ideas seem somewhat simple and obvious because I have been thinking about them for five years, intensely for over 1 or whether in fact, I am writing my the story of mydoom (ie failing because my ideas are painfully obvious and uninteresting).
Anyway, who cares for now? I think I will instead celebrate and triumph these first few pages in my chutney glow, take the rest of the afternoon off, and go see Dune with my friends.
Relocalization of Intellectual Property Law
A couple of folks have mentioned to me that they like the term “relocalization of intellectual property,” and I must credit to where it of course due: to the man of punning and clever terms ck of Rice’s Anthropology department.
His clever use of terms is about as hackish as one can get, driving the heart of meaning through unxpected word uses and combinations. My favorite word of his thus far is infolanche in refrence, to yep the infolanche of information we have to sift through on the web. He nailed it.
Hacker Protests!
I just turned in a huge fat paper discussing basically why Free and Open Source hackers, programmers, and advocates were compelled to protest in front of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. This is probably some of my most interesting dissertation material, covering the DeCSS affair, which was productive of a number of lawsuits and legal actions and a lot of hacker protest and civil disobedience, including some pretty impressive
poetry of protest, the author going public recently with a piercing legal/cultural analysis of the whole affair. (Good job Schoen, I am glad to see you thinking in cultural terms)
Here is my abstract:
The Re-localization of Intellectual Property Rights and the Rise of Expressive Rights among Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Hackers.
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the particular meanings of expressive rights among FOSS hackers and examines the ways in which they have come to signify their technical pragmatics as a form of First Amendment speech. Drawing from and extending work on the cultural life of liberalism, I argue the particular free speech character of FOSS historically reframes a longer Anglo-European tradition of liberal values and laws. FOSS expands the scope of expressive activity to include technical practices; a
HOT, Hacking–>Sauna
Lest one think that hacking occurs just on the net, locality of no importance, think again. Here was an announcement made today on a Debian mailing list.
Those Finnsss know how to lead the good life, sauna, free software, codfish…
**************************************
There has been a little bit of interest in a Debian sauna in Helsinki,
Finland, which I sort of proposed on IRC and my log. My plans are now
more concrete. I propose the weekend of July 2-4. This is the weekend
after GUADEC 2004[1], which is in southern Norway. The proximity might
make it possible for some people to visit both.
Thus, the plan is for people to arrive on Friday or Saturday and hang
around until Sunday. There will be at least one visit to a sauna[2]
(nudity is not required, whatever Wikipedia says), probably on Saturday.
You can sleep on my living room floor, if you don’t want to pay for a
hotel; I only have an extra mattress. I have ADSL. We can make food
ourselves, or go eat out. If the weather is favorable, a picnic at
Suomenlinna[3] would probably be nice. Helsinki has other sightseeing
opportunities as well.
This is meant as a social occasion, but hacking is of course allowed.
If you’re interested, let me know. Since arranging this doesn’t require
much from me, there is no real deadline.
[1] http://2004.guadec.org/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_sauna
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenlinna