Technology and Culture

For an experiment in networking and subjectivity, Johndan Johnson-Eilola has decided to go offline for a month, and he has asked me to be one of his guest bloggers. I can't imagine going offline for a month, but I await the results of his study with great interest. He says he feels happy and acknowledged when he receives email, blog comments, etc., and I agree; in fact, if a day goes by and no one calls me, emails, or leaves comments here, I'm engulfed in malaise.

Johndan said I may blog about anything I want at datacloud. It looks like about six people total will be guest blogging, and I'm curious to see what datacloud will sound like, if it will become cacophonous, if we'll talk to each other. I might try to be faithful to Johndan's interests, at least at first.

Blogging will be light for the next few days as I am at iLaw. I'm having a marvelous time! Much more later. :)

Tomorrow I leave for the GPACW conference, and I have finally finished my presentation. This time, I used Drupal's collaborative book module, which made the whole thing much more wieldy and easier to edit. Below is the table of contents:

• Introduction: The Call for Critical Studies of Genre
• Normalization in Higher Education
• The Deployment of Disciplinary Power in The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Invisible Adjunct and Heteroglossia
• Institutional Reform
• Conclusion: Weblogs and Change
• References

I cut a lot, but I still need to cut more (for my oral presentation--the version here will remain as is). Guess I'll be doing that in the hotel tomorrow night.

The new issue of thirdspace on Representation and Transgressive Sexualities just went live, and now they're featuring PDFs of each issue; Laura Gurak has noted that we're seeing this trend of both PDF versions and html versions in electronic publishing because if it looks like print, it's better for a tenure portfolio. She chalks it up to the fact that we're in a state of transition right now in terms of academic publishing.

Another cool little thing...I received an email from the program coordinator of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society's Internet Law Program May 13-15. Apparently I am one of a group of bloggers they're inviting to the program with a tuition waiver (the tuition is $1995, but for me it technically would have been $895 since I'm a student--hey, either way it's free). I'm excited about the opportunity to learn more about internet law than I ever could have imagined. Plus, I've never been to the Boston area before, so that will be nice. I'm still pinching myself with disbelief that they would invite me to this thing. I can't imagine who would have recommended me, but I'm grateful! Part of me still thinks this is a scam, a Who's Who Among American High School Students type of scheme. At any rate, I'll definitely blog my notes from the program and make sure Drupal and the progressive IP/publishing model we're adhering to for Into the Blogosphere get some attention.

Charlie has posted his prospectus, for anyone who's interested. The title is "'The Future Is Open' for Composition Studies: An Alternative Intellectual Property Model for the Digital Age." May it be the inauguration of a movement in scholarly publishing in Rhetoric and Composition.

Today, among lots and lots of other things, I must write a 500-word essay for my Rhetorical Theory class on The New Rhetoric by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. I also have to do some work with the blog collection (for those of you who have been asking when the frell the collection is going live, we're aiming for mid-June). I should also be working on my final papers for my Rhetorical Theory class and my Women's Studies class, gah. For the former, which is intended to be a conference paper, I had been thinking about doing something applying the theory we've covered in class to blogging, but now that I'm all in a tizzy about taking the prelims this summer, I was thinking about doing something more like a prelim-style explication of Habermas and the public sphere. I figure a blog researcher ought to know her Habermas, since it's been linked to blogging by several people. For example, there's Invisible Adjunct's blogroll, and Andrew Ó Baoill has been doing some good work in this vein as well. I also need to be fine-tuning my CCCC proposal.

What I'd rather be doing: Knitting and exercising. I know it might be hard for you to believe, but for the past few weeks, I've been going to the gym nearly every day. I used to exercise all the time when I was in my late teens/early twenties, and I'm starting to get that kind of enjoyment out of it again. I do 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, and then I go to the weight room, where I do tricep presses, arm curls, the torso-twist machine that works your obliques, leg curls, leg extensions, and leg presses. Three sets, twelve reps each. It makes me feel great--lightweight and strong, like I'm made of titanium. :)

Soon I'll be doing a little weekend jaunt to Fargo, at which I'll be presenting on the now-defunct Invisible Adjunct. I need to get my paper, which is now around 15 pages, into manageable, presentation-friendly chunks of information. I think I'll use the collaborative book module of Drupal for my presentation this time. Ah. It's Saturday night, and I'm sitting around feeling guilty over being so unproductive. I've been doing laundry and talking to long-distance friends on the phone, and now that it's after midnight, I've decided to go through the very helpful comments that Carol and Art gave me. I hope to be able to get some comments from IA herself too; I sent her the paper a few months ago but haven't sent a gentle reminder for some feedback yet.

Heather James called my attention to some conversations about gender and Wiki use. For example, there are issues of safety surrounding using one's real name or a pseudonym (of course that's an issue with anything one writes online, but in this case it's gender-centered). See also Girls Don't Wiki and Girls Do Wiki. My interest has been officially piqued.


Cross-posted at Kairosnews.