Claude Levi-Strauss

CNN.com posted an interesting article on one of the folks we talk about in T&T: Claude Levi-Strauss. This article may not make it to the Reading List, but It might be good to add to your notes.

Myths about open-access journals

Here's an interesting article about a topic that most of us will likely be thinking about: whether or not to publish in open-access journals (and what are those exactly?). Published by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, it's entitled "A Field Guide to Misunderstandings About Open Access". Basically, it looks at 25 "myths" about open-access journals (including "They're not peer-reviewed" and "They all charge too much to publish anything").

Anyone have experience with any of these journals, good, bad or ugly?

Interesting online journal on transhumanism

I've just found out about the online Journal of Evolution and Technology, which features articles on transhumanism and embodiment. I thought it might be a good reference for those of us working on those topics. The articles look like they range from ethics to technological discussions, so it's pretty wide-ranging.

Ellen Berry

Please attend any or all of these events! This is an excellent opportunity relevant to T&T work and many of our class discussions. Let me know if you have any questions! Leandra

THE UCF CENTER FOR HUMANITIES AND DIGITAL RESEARCH
and the UCF WOMEN’S STUDIES PROGRAM

welcome
ELLEN BERRY, Ph.D.

Brown Bag Lecture and Discussion: The Horrors of Power: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique in Contemporary Womenʹs Writing.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
11:00 am – 12:30 pm
PSY226B

Workshop: Starting an Online Scholarly Journal
Thursday, March 26, 2009
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
PSY226B

Dr. Ellen Berry is Professor of English at Bowling Green State University, where she specializes in Contemporary Cultural Theories, especially cultural theories, feminist theories, film theory, theories of the avant garde, theories of modernism and postmodernism, transculture studies, and postcommunist cultural studies. Dr. Berry’s interests include 20th‐ and 21st‐century writers, especially women’s writing and experimental forms of writing, narrative theory, history of the novel, and cultural narratives.

Publications include Transcultural Experiments: Russsian and American Models of Creative Communication (co‐authored with Mikhail Epstein and published by St. Martin’s), as well as essays on Kathy Acker, Gertrude Stein, and Jeannette Winterson. Dr. Berry is founder and co‐editor of Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, a peer‐reviewed, bi‐annual journal of cultural studies.

Sniffing Packets is Cooler than Teacher's Dry Erase Markers

We are used to observing written materials after the fact. Or theoretically, in an instructional narrative. The teacher draws a diagram on a whiteboard. How do you perceive (using all your senses) writing in progress? The scent of dry erase markers lingers for a little while; then there is ink, a freshly sharpened pencil. How about digital writing? With a bionic nose! A packet sniffer is a software tool that samples network traffic, best employed by setting the Ethernet interface into promiscuous mode. This exercise has all the marks of cool: Transgression, Nonlinearity, Multiple meanings, Commutation, Imagery.

How-to demonstration: configuring Wireshark, creating filters, saving data

Phenomena to sniff: joining a network via DHCP; an iPhone receives a call; web browsing; network print job; Wii

What to do with it: collage/montage, create a narrative,

Thoughts on Mob Teleaction

Getting Content:

Many recordings of “the same” phenomena using different technologies from different positions

Managing Content:

Collecting these recordings into a (or distributed) database(s), tagging them, associating them

Compositing:

Presenting the database contents in different ways, the reversal of the recording. Using off-the-shelf tools like iPhoto, GIMP, OpenOffice, etc. as well as creating web pages, stand alone applications, etc.

Even if you are concerned that a goal to “synthesize subjective impressions into a single narrative” violates Rice's definition of cool, you get out of it by realizing that the group forming just one of many presentation mechanisms as the course is reiterated escapes the supposition of a single, individual viewpoint constructed by a single, individual writer (artist, creator, generator, builder, copyist, etc.).

Kind of like the “double funnels” model from Memmott's Lexia to Perplexia

Programming:

This project should be hosted on Sourceforge.net or some other global, free, open source development community: to extend the work beyond the boundaries of the classroom both spatially and temporally, to provide world-class development, bug tracking, feedback, source control tools, and to expose students to these processes.
Over time and iterations of the course (perhaps taught at other locations, too) this toolset will grow and mutate so that it will not be necessary to enroll the help of a cadre of developers every time, expecting that the class enrollment will contain a mix of interests and proficiencies.

Design and Hosting are also project development aspects that must be handled along with behind the scenes programming and the actual collection of digital media.

Social networking eats our brains!

Well, not really. But here's another article expressing concern about the effect of social networking on developing minds, from The Guardian. From the article:

Greenfield believes ministers have not yet looked at the broad cultural and psychological effect of on-screen friendships via Facebook, Bebo and Twitter.

She told the House of Lords that children's experiences on social networking sites "are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity".

Arguing that social network sites are putting attention span in jeopardy, she said: "If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.