Someone by the name of “lobster” described my recent work in terms of its potential and damaging psychological effects (on me):

As for Ms. Coleman, I appreciate the work she’s doing but I would not want to be locked in a room with her. She has gazed deeply into the abyss. Who knows what horrors have taken root in her mind, and lie sleeping, waiting to unleash unfathomable nightmares for the lulz?

(Yes I loled; captures beautifully a bit of the trauma that can ensue from working on the abyss)

I have penned a few thoughts about Wikileaks here.

The New Yorker has a very nice piece about the follies and foibles of procrastination. I really identified with it, especially the ruminations of multiple/divided selves (I do feel more like Biella’s instead of Biella especially during moments of extreme procrastination).

The heart of the piece has to do with the existential face of procrastination, which the author nails with this quote by Mark Kingwell:

““Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all”

This reminds me of another one of my favorite (and kinda distributing but also kinda liberating) quotes by Henry Miller:

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning”

Finally, the most humorous bit in the article had to do with Victor Hugo, who apparently, to stave off distraction, would write in the nude and then make what sounds like his man servant hide his clothes so he could not go outside. Reminds me that prior to the Internet, there were certainly other ways to “squander” time.

For now, I encourage some procrastination: read it and you might get some insight as to this habit, which seems to afflict so many.

As I previously blogged about, I wrote an Annual Review of Anthropology on digital media last year. About a month ago, I found out that anyone can download it thanks to a link provided by the ARA, which we are allowed to put on one institutional web page. So go here (and go to the citation for the link) for those who are interested in a way too short review of some of the ethnographic literature on digital media.

Writing the piece left me many psychological wounds and scars, one of which had to do with the fact that I probably overlooked some folks. I have been left out of review type essays and honestly, it sucks. I tried to be as comprehensive as possible: I chose not to massively whittle down the scope (which was an option) and was able to smuggle in more citations than originally allowed and yet I still cut out 200 citations. But in the end I overlooked some folks as I found out about them too late. If I could go back in time, this is who I would include (well there are others but I have chosen these for now).

So Shaka McGlotten: not only does he have a cool name, he studies some cool stuff like DIY online porn, race, and zombies. He has published a bunch of articles and a book is forthcoming. Check out his work here.

I missed this book Online a Lot of the Time: Ritual, Fetish, and Sign by Ken Hills which looks quite pertinent and a great read.

Jonathan Marshall is an anthropologist in Sydney who has been working on digital stuff for a long while now and recently published Living Cybermind, which covers in detail modes of interacting and communicating in a detailed examination of a mailing list by the name of Cybermind.

Although this book is not out yet, it will be soon and looks fascinating: Digital Jesus (great cover). From what I understand, and one of the reasons I want to dive into the book , is because it is so longitudinal, at least when measured in Internet years. Rob Howard has studied Christians online since the days of Usenet to the present and thus this ethnography promises to have some real meat to it.

I am eagerly anticipating the forthcoming book by Beth Coleman . I had a chance to read a chapter recently and it looks fantastic. While in some respects grounded in virtual worlds, it is far more expansive than that topic, addressing a range of issues from desire, experience, emotion and race. Can’t wait.

I cite four dissertations in the ARA mostly because I read them, thought they were great, and material based on the dissertation is en route to being published in some form in the next future. The one dissertation I wish I had read is Jenny Cool’s thesis on cyberorganic.

If I told you that in the last two days, I have been caught in a vortex of coincidence, a vortex composed of pit bulls, free software, diaspora (the software), mold, and a New York Times reporter, I bet you would think “not likely.”

So the story started on Jet Blue, which offers snacks, lots of them, and Direct TV. Since I don’t have TV I kinda go on a binge, watching all sorts of shows as I make my way home. I watched a pretty distributing but interesting documentary on Jim Jones on CNN and a show on Animal Planet on pit bulls and parolees. When I rolled into my my current digs in northern Manhattan (I am currently banished from my downtown apt due to mold, but that is a whole other story), there was a dinner party well underway. At some point in the evening prompted by me, we talked pit bulls as my friends want to get one but their family has issued a threat of disavowal if they do.

The next morning, I was scoping out the website for the Animal Planet show as I was intrigued by it and frankly I kinda like pit bulls (maybe less now although I think they are unfairly maligned). Five minutes into pursuing the site, I hear screeches from hell. It sounds like a woman is being attacked. And she is. A woman right outside of my window was being attacked by… a pit bull.

So I am staying with a friend, an open source developer, Karl Fogel and good soul that he is, he runs out to help the lady (since I have been subject to 5 weeks of sickness due to mold—or so that is what we think it is—was enough for me; I could not stomach the idea of getting bit so I played the role of concerned spectator). It took minutes upon minutes, really just too many minutes to get the pit bull off, even a brick pounded against his head failed (apparently, a cigarette or match held to the throat does the trick, which I found out later). Eventually, the dog was extracted, a huge team of cops showed up, the dog was whisked away, the victim taken to the hospital, and life returned to calm and quiet.

So the next day, I was being interviewed by a New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer who wrote a story about Diaspora for the New York Times back in the summer, helping to propel it from relative obscurity to near insta-fame (one of the Diaspora developers, Max, was my student). We were running out of time (I had another appointment) so I asked him if he lived in northern Manhattan as that is what his bio page indicates. He confirmed, I explained I was up there and that we could meet up there later to finish up. He inquired what part, I told him roughly where I was, he remarked he was near there, and so naturally I told him about the crazy pit bull attack I witnessed from my window as I can’t shut my trap when it comes to things like that.

Well yes you know what is coming next next: he was there, helping Karl (and others) deal with the pit bull attack. He lives nearby and heard the shrieks of agony and came out to aid. All and all it was pretty horrific. He also “met” Karl in so far as Karl gave him his phone number and email just in case he was needed as a witness (Karl had to dash off to catch a plane). Well, the “funny” thing, or as you also might guess: Jim, who is doing some more writing on tech, free software etc, should really talk to Karl given his key role in the community, so they already met, although under odd and terrible circumstances.

I am not sure if I am more wigged out by the fact that I was reading about pit bulls when the attack happened or whether the reporter I was interviewed by was there along side with a free software developer he really needs to interview. Whatever the case, I kinda hope the vortex of coincidence now leaves me to hit someone else (sans any horrible attack). Or else, as Karl noted in the blog comments, I will have to be very careful about what shows I watch:

Amen to that! Enough with the coincidence vortex. As I said to Biella in IRC later: “Do us a favor — don’t watch any shows about nuclear attacks on New York, okay

I meant to blog about this a long time ago but it slipped past me. Here is my course on hackers described in The Atlantic . I ma not teaching it this year but will do so next year. I actually include a lot more than what is in the syllabus (much to the chagrin of my students).

So I suspect folks have received a message from a professor when on sabbatical and it usually goes something like this:

Thank you for your message. This is an automated reply.
I am on sabbatical leave and unable to reply to my email.  For all matters concerning the __________________________ Department of __________ Contact ____________–.  
Thank you for your patience,
Professor …

I have been thinking of writing one myself, being I am also on sabbatical but thought I might be a bit more honest and forthcoming. This is what I have so far come up with:

Thank you for your message. This is an automated reply. I am on sabbatical leave and while I am able to reply to my email, in fact, I have a heck of a lot more time compared to when I teach, it is customary to write a message like this and claim otherwise.

However, being on leave does relieve you of (most) all department responsibilities. And given the grueling pace of academic jobs and the contemporary burden of email avalanches we all suffer from, I am taking the license (the sabbatical license) to say: 1) I may never get back to you 2) I may but it may take longer than usual 3) honestly I suffer from MEAD (Massive Email Anxiety Disorder) and hate it when people don’t respond to me, so I will likely get back to you but don’t you get MEAD if I fail to do so.

Thanks for your patience,
Gabriella Coleman
On leave 2010-2011

Trolling and refueling the tank of spectacle.

So, conventional wisdom is that once you experience something first hand, it sits close to you, so that you can learn from it, think about it, and possibly invoke it. This rings true for me, except for one particular type of experience–finishing a large and complicated project—like writing a dissertation, taking PhD qualifying exams, like writing a very complicated review article. Once it is done and over with and a few months have walked away, I no longer can fathom, at all, how I even did it. It is as if I went through the experience and then amnesia set in, erasing and wiping out the fibers of events, emotions, and thoughts that went into making and finishing the project.

I find this unnerving, for various reasons. First, this di-juncture is not one I experience with other experiences, even unpleasant ones, like pain (broken collarbone, burnt hand, terrible earache), for I am able, nearly always, to shore up some shadow of those experience. More practically, when I am faced again with needing to conquer what feels unconquerable (which, unsurprisingly, is my current predicament), I have no experiential reserve to guide me. Instead, it is like I am standing at a new shore, for the first time. I tell myself,” I have done and I can do it” but there is no concomitant emotional register or memory that assures me that this is in fact true. Maybe a few more projects like these and there will be some imprint to steer me in the future but somehow I suspect my experiential amnesia will remain the same.