Very interesting little piece on Wired’s blog that might figure into my BAWS project– it would at least be good in terms of scholarship: “Only you can prevent censorious firewalls.” The article is really talking about the international organization Reporters Without Borders. According to them, there are 13 countries which seriously censor Internet content that is critical of the government, and there are 61 people around the world who are in prison for posting “subversive” content on a blog or a web site. Reporters Without Borders is trying to organize an international protest about this through their web site in early November.
Weird paper mill observations
I was scanning through some of the google alerts I have set up just now and came across this site, EssayCapital.com, which appears to be a pretty traditional paper mill kind of outfit– you know, you pay them and they write the paper for you. Old-fashioned cheating.
I guess I was struck though by two things in looking through the site for a few minutes. First, they have a “blog” of sorts, one that seems to offer free advice to students on getting started with their own research papers. It’s not a particularly good blog nor does it seem to have very good advice (in fact, it seems to repeat entries quite a bit for some reason), but it does seem to be a way of getting credibility– in other words, I think the implied message here is “Hey, we must be professional and credible because we’re offering some basic advice for free! Would a paper mill do that? Heck no!”
And second, there were some other kind of funny aspects of the site. For example, from the FAQ:
My teacher is very sensitive to plagiarism issue. What is your policy on it?
As a well profound company that really values its customers’ impression we follow a zero-toleration policy concerning plagiarism. Moreover, as proof we are holders of the special anti-plagiarism system that is used by most universities in the US. Every single written order is checked prior to being sent to the customer.
And then there’s this clunker describing the folks working with EssayCapital.com:
Firstly, we employ the best writers available, and no other competitor can meet our level of professionalism. Every single writer has received a degree from a university in the United States, United Kingdom, or Australia. Their superior level is backed by diplomas (not like other companies who employ writers from India and Pakistan). Each writer employed by our company is a native speaker, and it does not matter how well a person knows English if he is a foreigner- he can not fully understand the culture of English writing.
Yikes.
Facebook friends article/Dunbar's number and blog communities?
My “real life” and Facebook friend Rachel sent me a link to this Slate article, “The Facebook Commandments,” which is really about the practice of “friending.” It’s a light and amusing piece, something that might be a nice little reading for ENGL 516. Here’s a good quote that taught me something too:
Noted anthropologist Robin Dunbar found that the mean clique—a group of primary social partners—consists of around 12 people. Average maximum network size—a group of real friends plus friends of friends—is around 150. I don’t know about you, but most of my primary clique isn’t on Facebook. My social graph and my social life overlap, but not nearly as much as they would if all of my close friends were on Facebook.
That’s why college students find Facebook so addictive. An undergrad who doesn’t have a Facebook profile is regarded as a Luddite, the social equivalent of leading a survivalist lifestyle complete with flintlock rifle and bandana. In this case, Facebook works as it should. Even if you have 700 friends, the site susses out your real bosom buddies—they post on your wall, they trade messages with you, and they pop up on your News Feed way more often.
I think the other reason why college students have so many different Facebook friends is because they have so many friends, period. I never knew as many people on a first name basis as I did when I was an undergraduate.
But the thing I learned was the bit about Dunbar’s number, which (maybe I think this because it’s just on my mind) might be something worth exploring in terms of my BAWS project. The opening sentences of the Wikipedia entry for Dunbar’s number says 150 “represents a theoretical maximum number of individuals with whom a set of people can maintain a social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who each person is and how each person relates socially to every other person. Group sizes larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced policies and regulations to maintain a stable cohesion.” The po-mo English professor in my very much wants to resist “rules” like this, but as I think about my experiences with blogging the last year or so, it makes a lot of sense. On my own blog, which I suspect is “regularly read” by about 40 or 50 people tops and which receives few comments, I don’t feel much need for “rules.” On the other hand, on EMUTalk.org, the community blog I run for EMU that has thousands of “regular readers” and that receives hundreds of hits on even a slow day, a variety of different ruckuses over the year really called for/required me to write up some pretty specific rules for proper social conduct on the site to “maintain a stable cohesion” and just simple order.
Yet something else to research perhaps….
A ten (or so) minute post on sabbatical stuff so far
I haven’t been posting here (or my unofficial blog, for that matter) much lately, I suppose because I’ve been busier than I thought. Doing what? Well, in no particular order:
- I would like to say that I’m making incredible process on my book project, but that would be an exaggeration. I am making some though. I think I am taking what I can only describe as the “National Novel Writing Month” approach to the academic/quasi-academic book project: what I’m doing is more or less writing as much stuff as I can by just sitting my ass down and just writing with the plan of going back later to do much rewriting based on reading and research. We’ll see how it goes.
- I do have a survey of sorts in draft. Right now, I’m just sharing it with some friends/colleagues, and on Wednesday, I’m talking to someone at EMU about constructing this survey so that it will be workable.
- I still have to do the paperwork for what at EMU is called “Human Subject Review” but which tends to be known as “Institutional Review Boards” or IRB. It is a pain, but for this project, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. danah boyd had a blog post recently where she listed the pain in the ass nature of IRB as one of the main reasons why she isn’t going to pursue an academic career. I can kind of see her point, especially given her interest in things like how minors use MySpace (minors always complicated permissions). But it is also kind of a cop-out IMO, sort of like saying “I don’t like putting my own gas in the tank so I’m refusing to take that cross-country trip.”
- The verdict is still out on my “sabbatical lite” thing. I feel very pulled between two contrasting emotions/thoughts, one where my lack of teaching and general presence on campus makes me feel “out of it” regarding various department and program matters, and the other where I feel like the things I do need to do on campus because of the way I am splitting up my time is taking away from reading and research and writing. Push and pull. I think it might take a while longer before I know for sure how good or bad of an idea this will end up being.
- I am also using my time as a bit of “time off” in the sense that I have been busy painting my house (the front is done) and generally fixing stuff up around here (next week, new flooring in the kitchen), and I have been trying to hit the gym as much as possible (though that is also where I do most of my scholarly reading). The truth is I’ve probably spent more time doing this than I have spent actually writing and reading. I at first felt quite guilty about this, because I earned this sabbatical based on a proposal that promised that I would write a book manuscript and that’s what I should be doing. But colleague after colleague have told me that a sabbatical is as much about taking a break and getting away as it is about anything else. The other morning, when the weather was beautiful and I decided that it was more important to take one more long bike ride instead of sitting in my basement in front of the computer, I recognized the point my colleagues were trying to make.
Google Docs: The movie
An interesting little video about Google Docs.
I’ve been using Google Docs quite a bit lately for my BAWS project, using it as a repository for notes, free writings, and (I had planned) actual drafts of things. On the one hand, I like Google Docs for all the reasons mentioned in this video, especially that I can access my files from wherever. I like that it would probably take an apocalyptic of proportions much more important than any book project for these files to disappear. And, of course, it’s free.
As a teaching tool, Google Docs seems to have huge potential. Not only do you get all of the above reasons, but you also get a system where you can share files with each other, something that would make peer review and collaborative writing pretty easy.
On the other hand, I’m feeling the need to actually go back to the evil MS Word when it comes to actually writing things that might turn into parts of a book manuscript, I guess for two basic reasons. First, I’m already running into some feature problems that (as far as I can tell) Google Docs doesn’t do– footnotes, for example. And second, there is the ever-present and somewhat annoying power of MS Word being the thing that everyone else in the universe uses. Hmmm….
Emerging from the wild….
I’ve been slow on blogging and BAWS projects lately because of a camping trip to the Pinery in Ontario. It’s not that interesting though I will soon blog about it unofficially here, but what I thought about mentioning here is the difficulty of getting back into the swing of work after taking it off to the extent that I did. No electricity and no laptop, and really, no time to read, either. Today has mostly been about catching up from all this; perhaps tomorrow will be about actually doing some scholarly work. We’ll see….
Sometimes, I read things that I think are wrong
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in a kind of interesting and conflicted stage with my sabbatical lite/BAWS project: I’m doing a lot of reading, I’m doing some writing, but I’m also doing a fair amount of writing program coordinator work to get the semester started, and I’m also trying to/worried about painting my house. And of all these things, the painting of the house is the most time sensitive duty– or really, weather sensitive.
In any event, one book I’m reading while on the stationary bike at the gym is Geert Lovink’s Zero Comments, and while I am gleaning some interesting observations as I go, I have to admit that I am struck by some of what Lovnik is saying here that just strikes me as, um, wrong.
Here’s a particularly problematic paragraph with my comments in between:
The blogosphere has been shaped neither by dotcom entrepreneurs nor by techno-geeks. Really? The folks who brought us blogger, wordpress, and/or Moveable Type aren’t entrepreneurs or techno-geeks? Basic computer knowledge does the job. Um, you mean basic computer knowledge like PHP, MySQL, Python, managing server space, and the like? Not even html skills are required. Only if you want your blog/site to look, feel, and function as the work of someone who doesn’t understand the medium at all. For business types there is no immediate money in it. There are dozens of companies making real money off of blogs nowadays, and hundreds of wannabes out there. The open character of blogs even forms a risks who are into branding and PR. Unless you are into radical transparency or you use blogs to shape your message and PR. The geeks feel protected in their Slashdot community and prefer the cleanliness of ASCII in email versus the glossy personality-driven approach of blogs. Isn’t slashdot.com a blog? For most academics. blogs are irrelevant as they don’t count as publications. The same could be said of Internet activists who have not moved beyond the use of e-mail and their own content management system. Whaaaa???
I could go on even with this paragraph, but you get the idea. And again, I want to be clear that I don’t think that everything that Lovink is saying is wrong– this is just a particularly problematic paragraph. But I guess it makes me think of two things with my own project. First, the problem with making too many pronouncements about technology along the lines of what Lovink has done in this paragraph is that the pace of rapid change in online practices versus the glacial pace of print means that things that seemed dead-certain and obvious three years ago can look downright silly once the book hits the market. Second, there’s still a lot of room for debate about what exactly are these things we call blogs and blogging.
"98 Blog Tips for a Lazy Sunday"
Speaking of making money and blogging: From Problogger comes “98 Blog Tips for a Lazy Sunday,” and also the project/page/entry “31 Days to Building a Better Blog.” The intention with these tips has a lot to do with profit, but they also tend to be good ideas for good blog writing in general. I could see these things being very good tips for the blog part of Writing for the World Wide Web.
And again I wonder: what is the relationship between writerly/writing motivations and profit?
I also have to wonder a bit about sites like Problogger. Are sites that offer tips on how you too can become a professional blogger akin to infomercials or classrooms? Or both?
Boing Boing changes, and money and blogging
I noticed this morning that there have been some changes at what is currently the most popular blog out there right now (I think, at least according to technorati– it’s one of my favorite reads at least), Boing Boing. The changes are captured in this post, “Welcome to the new Boing Boing!,” from Mark Frauenfelder. I’m not so interested in the new look (though it’s nice) or the spin-off bb gadgets blog (though I like gadgets, too). I am interested though in the change in their policy about comments:
We’re also happy to be reintroducing comments to Boing Boing, a feature we reluctantly dropped a couple of years ago. At that time, we lacked the resources to manage the comments, and felt that a lousy comment system was worse than no system at all, so we pulled the plug. We’ve never felt good about it, though, because our readers’ comments added a great deal of value to the blog. To correct this, we hired a terrific community manager to oversee the conversations: Teresa Nielsen Hayden. At her own blog, Making Light, Teresa has proven herself to be a wonderfully wise and talented tender of online conversations. Teresa worked closely with our designers to develop a commenting system that supports the Boing Boing community while preventing noise from drowning out the signal. “We want this new community system to make Boing Boing even more fun and informative,” says Teresa. Under her supervision, we’re sure it will be.
And then the other thing I find interesting is the number of people that Frauenfelder thanks for “helping make it all happen.” I don’t really know how many of these folks actually make a living at Boing Boing (after all, I think all of the main writers here have other jobs of various sorts), but there is a lot of advertising on the site, and, given Boing Boing’s popularity, I would assume that putting an ad on the site isn’t cheap. They’ve got to be making money hand over fist.
Now, I’m not against writers making money, and I certainly have no problem with the success that the Boing Boing folks have had. Good for them. But I do wonder about the extent to which sites like Boing Boing (or others out there that either are profitable or that aspire to be profitable) are still characteristically “blogs.” Back in the day, Rebecca Blood wrote The Weblog Handbook that the weblog is of course written by an individual and is of course not done for money. (I’m paraphrasing here, but I’m pretty sure that’s in her book some place.) I’m sure she’s changed her mind about these things in at least some ways since blogging has obviously changed in the last 10 years.
Still, it raises a good question especially in terms of my project: to what extent is blogging still an empowering “writerly” activity when it crosses over into money making? If the exigence for the rhetorical act becomes primarily a pay check, is it still– what word should I use here?– authentic? I dunno. I always resist criticism of novelist who make a lot of money, but I guess I’m still a little more resistant to the big bucks bloggers.
Regardless, I think I’d like to interview these Boing Boing folks for the BAWS project.
"Go get a (virtual) life"
Another article/item that might be useful teaching in the winter term, this addition of “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday” on virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft and stuff like that. I haven’t heard it yet, but my wife (who did hear it) said “hey, you oughta listen to this,” so it’s probably good. Thanks to Bradley Bleck for the link!