John Jones

SXSWi Panel Wrap-up: "Swarming Plato's Cave: Rethinking Digital Fantasies"

2010-03-17T13:43:00.003-05:00

The video below is a version of the talk I gave at the 2010 SXSWi conference. I was part of the panel "Swarming Plato's Cave: Rethinking Digital Fantasies" (you can find out more info about the panel here as well as links and resources referenced by the panelists here).

Working off the panel's theme, I did a short presentation on techno-utopianism titled "The Fantasy of Perfect Communication."

Review: Haraway, "Cyborg Manifesto" (1985)

2009-08-28T12:54:00.009-05:00

I'm coming a little late to this text, but I found it to be a fascinating read. Originally published in 1985 in Socialist Review, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" initially sprang from a debate in feminist studies, but it quickly became the catalyst—at least in the humanities—for a new way of thinking about how the individual and society interact with machines. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort write in their introduction to the essay in The New Media Reader (n.b. page references below are from this version of the text),"Haraway's cyborg preference has led some readers into uninteresting interpretations, in which it is assumed that Haraway's project is an attack on radical feminists such as Mary Daly" (515). I'm not so sure that such interpretations would be "uninteresting" to feminist studies scholars, but their larger point—that the influence of Haraway's essay has outgrown it's feminist roots "and may indeed be the starting point for current progressive scholarship on science and technology" (515)—is well taken.

In the essay, Haraway argues that the focus on dualisms—between "mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism" (519)—as the basis for progressive resistance to injustice was no longer useful. According to Haraway, "a slightly perverse shift of perspective might better enable us to contest for meanings, as well as for other forms of power and pleasure in technologically mediated societies" (519). That shift was to establish the cyborg as a mythos for this resistance. In the remainder of the essay, Haraway argues that since the "cyborg world" was free of these dualisms, it would be open to the possibility of being "about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints" (519).

What was most interesting to me about the essay was that Haraway defined the cyborg as not merely the combination of human and machine, although this is the most common popular use of the term. Instead, she claims that

a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. (516)

While Haraway frequently refers to the combination of person and machine as defining the mythology of the cyborg, the crucial move she makes in the essay is to demonstrate how the processes of language have already made the cyborg a social reality. Of course, she writes, "modern medicine is…full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine" (516), yet machines aren't only fashioned from cogs and gears, or circuits and switches. Society is a machine, as is language, and Haraway argues that social theory must take into account the degree to which our humanity is intertwined with physical and social tools, using the cyborg as the metaphor for understanding the connection.

A tree visualization of Haraway's use of "cyborg" in "Cyborg Manifesto"

One particular way in which we can see this connection between language, machine, and body is the trend in the sciences to translate everything into readable code. Haraway notes that "biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge" (517) and that the technologies of communication and biological manipulation "are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies," for "communications sciences and modern biologies are constructed by a common move—the translation of the world into a problem of coding" (524). In other words, not only are we literally colonizing our bodies with machines, we compose them as texts as well, thereby rendering them more susceptible to refashioning through language.

The Human Genome Project and self-administered DNA tests are just a few of the examples of the ways in which "reading" the code of our bodies is changing the ways in which we think about ourselves. According to Haraway, language has played a crucial role in way in which

late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines (518)

while language—or "communications breakdown"—is the key to stress, the "privileged pathology" of the cyborg (524).

Haraway insists more than once that the cyborg isn't interested in history or looking backward. However, if we accept her conclusions about the role of language and other technologies in creating cyborgs, then we have to admit that we have always been cyborgs. Convincing evidence in the study of distributed cognition suggests that our cognitive functions are not contained solely in ourselves, but are rather spread throughout our environment, particularly in our tools. Language is one such tool, and Haraway's work suggests that language is always embodied. She writes that our "bodies are maps of power and identity" (534), and language has played a crucial role in the ways in which that power and identity is enacted.

Vote for our SXSWi panel "Swarming Plato's Cave: Rethinking Digital Fantasies"

2009-08-17T20:56:00.004-05:00

The SXSW 2010 panel picker went live today, so you can now vote for our panel, "Swarming Plato's Cave: Rethinking Digital Fantasies," to appear in the lineup for the Interactive Conference in March. If the panel is approved, I'll be speaking with Will Burdette (Twitter), Jim Brown (Twitter), Trish Roberts-Miller (Twitter), and Jillian Sayre (Twitter).

Here's the panel description from the SXSW site:

Technology has always been packaged with promises of better democracy, media, education, minds, and bodies. An intellectual tradition, from Plato onward, questions whether technology can actually deliver on these promises. Working from—and questioning—this tradition, we will examine how material technology is inextricable from fantasies of an ideal world.

If you're interested in the topic, click through to the SXSW site and vote for us.

"Social Media & Education" panel at THATCamp Austin

2009-08-17T20:09:00.003-05:00

Last week I had the chance to attend THATCamp Austin, a regional spinoff of THATCamp at George Mason University.

I was able to attend two thought-provoking panel sessions, and I got to hear about a lot of interesting projects through the dork shorts presentations. You can read a lot about what happened by scanning through the archive of Twitter posts at TwapperKeeper.

I really enjoyed the unconference format. Instead of having the conference schedule determined by the conference organizers, the attendees voted on the proposals they wanted to see. One of these proposals suggested a discussion about the role of social media in educational practice. Below, I've posted some video from this session for those who weren't able to make it.

Social media etiquette

2009-05-21T14:55:00.004-05:00

A month or so ago I recorded an interview with the local Fox station on social media etiquette. The interview was a lot of fun, in that I got to talk about Twitter and Facebook with reporter Foti Kallergis and producer/cameraman Jacob.

Here’s a link to the story on the Fox 7 website, and I’ve embedded the full video below.

Interactive Austin 2009

2009-04-28T11:33:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I got to attend the morning sessions at the Interactive Austin conference. I was invited along with some other students at UT to blog and tweet about the conference, the theme of which was using social media tools and organization to improve enterprise profitability.

Because I had to leave early, I only had a chance to see the first two keynotes and one breakout session, but what I saw was interesting (here’s my tweetstream from the conference, via Twitter Search).

The highlight of my visit was Sam Lawrence’s keynote “No More Whip Cream on BS.” Although I don’t have much connection to enterprise business, I really enjoyed Lawrence’s presentation style. He presented a lot of what could have been really dry material quickly and entertainingly. I had my Flip cam with me and took some (shaky) video of the talk. Below is a clip from the first few minutes of his talk. The rest of my videos can be found here.

The badge-holder method for keeping track of conference contacts

2009-04-20T18:24:00.007-05:00

One of the primary reasons cited for going to conferences is that they are great places for professionals to network. You can meet new people with similar interests, and those people can be valuable contacts in your field. This is particularly the case in academia, where contacts are important for collaboration and research.

The only problem with this system, is that it sometimes can be difficult to manage. If you’re like me and have a problem with names, it can be difficult to find a person’s contact info when all you can remember is what they looked like and what they study. I used to come home from conferences, take out all the business cards I collected, and studiously enter them into my address book one-by-one, adding keywords--like the name of the conference or what the person studies--to make it easier to find them later.

But then I found a better way. Now, whenever I get someone’s business card, I immediately write on the back of the card why the owner and I traded cards--if I was supposed to send them information about a presentation, for example, or plan to meet them for coffee--and then I stick the card in the pouch holding my conference badge. I then keep my badges in my office (see the photo) and I instantly have a filing system keeping track of my conference contacts by conference with notes about each individual.

Of course this system is limited. I can only access it at home, and eventually I’m going to run out of doorknob space and will need to find a new place to keep them. But despite these limitations this system has so far worked surprisingly well. If I need to contact someone, all I need to do is remember the conference I met them at, then access my filing system to find their info.

"Is Aristotle on Twitter?" panel wrap-up

2009-03-22T15:28:00.012-05:00

A visualization of messages referencing the #Aristotle hashtag on Twitter, created by Social Collider. The red lines in the center are the #Aristotle references. Click on the image for a high res version.

Thanks again to everyone who came to our SXSW panel, “Is Aristotle on Twitter?,” last Tuesday. The feedback from the crowd and online was very supportive, and the discussion was driven by some perceptive and interesting questions from the audience.

If you weren’t able to make it to the panel, there are a lot of ways you can catch up with it online. ZDNet posted a video of my discussion of arrangement,

while fellow panelist Will Burdette has posted audio of the entire session on his blog.

You can also find photos of the session here.

Update (Mar. 23, 2009): Panelist Jim Brown has posted a description of his talk on delivery on his blog, along with the accompanying video “Delivery: From Cicero to Beyonce.” Here’s part of the description from his post, along with the video:

I talked about how delivery in the history of rhetorical education dealt with using the body to make meaning. While Cicero thought that teaching delivery in the form of breathing exercises was kind of silly, this didn't stop teachers from showing students the mechanics of delivery. In 19th Century elocution models, such instruction meant that students were shown very specific ways to move their bodies. To bring this discussion to the present, I discussed Obama's delivery. But I also discussed Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video has an example of rhetorical education. All of Beyonce's students (those imitating her on YouTube) are learning to use their bodies to make meaning.

Update (June 1, 2009): I’ve posted a slightly longer version of my talk here.

“Is Aristotle on Twitter?”: The interview

2009-03-12T11:31:00.007-05:00

Last week, Adam Lee of SXTXState interviewed me and my fellow SXSW panelists about “Is Aristotle on Twitter?” Here’s the video:

The panel will be Tuesday, March 17 at 10:00 a.m. in room B. You can find more info here.

“Is Aristotle on Twitter?”: Details of SXSW panel now online

2009-01-30T11:27:00.006-06:00

This March I’m going to be in a panel discussion at SXSW with Will Burdette (Twitter), Jim Brown (Twitter), Trish Roberts-Miller (Twitter), and Jillian Sayre (Twitter). The panel is titled “Is Aristotle on Twitter.” Here’s the panel description from the SXSW site:

We introduce a framework for understanding information overload by reflecting on and updating ancient communicative traditions. Aristotle was an information maven and Cicero a communication connoisseur. These classical communicators designed their speeches around five principles: invention, style, arrangement, memory, and delivery. Contemporary communicators build on this tradition with Web-based technologies.

Mark your calendars now to make sure you don’t miss it. :)

Composition publishing woes

2009-01-19T11:44:00.003-06:00

In the spirit of getting back into the swing of posting here, enjoy these blog posts by Debbie Hawhee and Collin Brooke on the publishing woes at CCC.

Here’s the part that jumped out at me from Brooke’s post:

The problem isn't just the ridiculously low acceptance rate--it's that rate combined with the fact that the journal has a colossal backlog right now of accepted essays. Traditionally, the answer to the latter problem has been to lower the acceptance rate--accept fewer essays, and the backlog lifts eventually. But Deb's right, I think, to note that that's not a viable solution. The acceptance rate can't honestly go much lower, and even if it could, the editor would have to start rejecting submissions that had been accepted by the readers.

UC-Irvine statistician advocates boycotting the BCS

2009-01-07T16:35:00.005-06:00

Slate’s Bill James has a great article on the failures of the BCS system. Most of James’s points are based on a 2006 paper (requires login) in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports by UC-Irvine’s Hal S. Stern.

I couldn’t access Stern’s original article, but James summarizes his main points in the Slate piece:

The problems with the BCS are:

That there is a profound lack of conceptual clarity about the goals of the method;
That there is no genuine interest here in using statistical analysis to figure out how the teams compare with one another. The real purpose is to create some gobbledygook math to endorse the coaches' and sportswriters' vote;
That the ground rules of the calculations are irrational and prevent the statisticians from making any meaningful contribution; and
That the existence of this system has the purpose of justifying a few rich conferences in hijacking the search for a national title, avoiding a postseason tournament that would be preferred by the overwhelming majority of fans.

The excellent play of the teams at the top of the polls this year has illustrated the need for a college football playoff. Despite the legitimate cases for USC, Texas, and Utah to the national championship, it will be decided by two other teams (who also have legitimate claims on the title) in a one-off game that will settle nothing.

James does a nice job elaborating on Stern’s objections, as in this comment relating to 1.:

There are several things that a ranking system could do. It could rank teams based on their accomplishments over the course of the season—whom they played and whom they beat—or it could rank them based on the probability that they would win against a given opponent. It could rank teams based on how they have played over the course of the season, including perhaps in some early-season games against teams that were not quite sure who their quarterback was, or it could rank them based on how strong they are at the end of the season. It could rank the teams based on consistency, or it could rank them based on dominance.

Which of these is the goal of the BCS system?

Nobody has any idea. It's never been debated. There is a perception among the people who are in charge of this monkey that if you just turn the rankings over to a computer, the computer will figure those things out. The reality is that it can't. It is very difficult to objectively measure anything if you don't know what it is you are measuring.

Update: it appears that the list of objections to the BCS come from James, not from Stern, as I originally stated. -John

Social media and narcissism at HASTAC

2008-12-19T19:35:00.003-06:00

I just posted a response to Mark Bauerlein's latest blog post at Chronicle.com. The link is below.

Social media and narcissism

The Cupertino Effect

2008-12-15T17:27:00.002-06:00

From now on I plan to refer to “collaboration” as “Cupertino.”

"The Cupertino Effect" is the technical term for a correct word that is consistently erroneously replaced by spell-checkers. It's named for Microsoft Word 97's habit of changing "co-operation" (a common British spelling) to "Cupertino," yielding such boners as "a 1999 NATO report mentions the 'Organization for Security and Cupertino in Europe'; an EU paper of 2003 talks of 'the scope for Cupertino and joint development of programmes'; a UN report dated January 2005 argues for 'improving the efficiency of international Cupertino'."

When spellcheckers attack: The Cupertino Effect

FluidTunes: Motion interface for iTunes

2008-12-05T13:46:00.003-06:00

I downloaded FluidTunes, a gestural interface for iTunes, yesterday and started playing with it. The software, which is Mac-only, uses the iSight camera on your Mac to interpret waving gestures which are used to browse your iTunes music library. Right now FluidTunes is only available for Mac, and it only works on systems with a camera. Here’s a demonstration:

While the software is pretty innovative, I found the user experience to be disappointing. Your iTunes library can only be navigated song-by-song which makes FluidTunes unwieldy for large music libraries. Additionally, I found it somewhat difficult to control the interface. Positioning my hand in the correct part of the camera’s view to get the program to recognize my motions was tricky, so it was hard for me to select the song I wanted. My head, however, was always in the right position, so if I moved it slightly—by stretching my neck, or turning around—it caused me to further lose my place.

Overall, I think this project is a great demonstration of the kinds of things that can be done with the iSight camera, even if it still needs a bit of tweaking.

via: LifeHacker

Technology-assisted out-of-body experience

2008-12-04T13:33:00.005-06:00

This article on creating the illusion of body swaping using virtual reality gear made me think of the mirror therapy for phantom limb pain (Wikipedia description / smarty-pants description). Here’s the abstract of the new study, by Valeria I. Petkova and H. Henrik Ehrsson:

The concept of an individual swapping his or her body with that of another person has captured the imagination of writers and artists for decades. Although this topic has not been the subject of investigation in science, it exemplifies the fundamental question of why we have an ongoing experience of being located inside our bodies. Here we report a perceptual illusion of body-swapping that addresses directly this issue. Manipulation of the visual perspective, in combination with the receipt of correlated multisensory information from the body was sufficient to trigger the illusion that another person's body or an artificial body was one's own. This effect was so strong that people could experience being in another person's body when facing their own body and shaking hands with it. Our results are of fundamental importance because they identify the perceptual processes that produce the feeling of ownership of one's body.

via Boing Boing

Amazon mobile app powered by … humans!

2008-12-03T18:09:00.005-06:00

Amazon has just released an iPhone app. Called Amazon Mobile, the app simply allows users to browse the products on the site. As some commentators have noted, this doesn’t make it much better than visiting the Amazon site online with your phone.

However, the app does have one unique feature. Called Amazon Remembers, it allows users to snap a picture of an item they want. The photo is then uploaded to Amazon, and, if the item can be identified in Amazon's catalogue, users will eventually see a link to purchase the item, both on their phones and on the Amazon home site.

This feature is interesting because Amazon is using people—rather than any kind of fancy image recognition—to identify the items in the photos, presumably using their Mechanical Turk service. It will be interesting to see how well the service works. Perhaps more interesting will be what Amazon does with the usage data the service generates. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company will use the information gathered by its classifiers to develop some kind of automatic image recognition, just as Google used GOOG-411 to build its voice recognition database.

Facebook Connect launch

2008-12-01T14:29:00.002-06:00

CNET’s Rafe Needleman on tomorrow’s launch of Facebook Connect. A lot of companies (I’m looking at you Microsoft) have tried to crack the portable-I.D. nut with little success, so it remains to be seen how the Facebook venture will work out.

The backlash begins

2008-11-11T17:40:00.002-06:00

From Slate.

America's unprecedented showing of financial and emotional support helped the Obama campaign win the Oval Office. It was a beautiful thing. And I really am going to miss seeing "Barack Obama" in my inbox three times a day. But it's high time for us voters to get back to panicking about our 401(k)s. So please stop e-mailing to ask for money. You're president-elect now, Barack. Consider yourself cut-off.

The Audacity of E-mail: Dear Mr. President-elect, please take me off your spam list

The Maple Syrup Story

2008-11-08T15:31:00.005-06:00

“What’s the best thing on the internet right now?” you ask? Well, it’s Roger Ebert’s blog.

Don’t believe me? Here’s The Maple Syrup Story from one of his recent posts to prove it:

My parents put me aboard the Panama Limited from Urbana-Champaign to Chicago. It was my first train trip alone. I had a new tweed sport coat, a tie that was choking me, and a $20 bill in my wallet. I would be met by my cousins Blanche and Ethel Doyle and taken to visit my Aunt Ida. I was to buy myself breakfast on the train. I rushed to the diner, was greeted as “young man,” and assigned a table for two. The other seat was soon occupied by a passenger from further front on the train. This meant he was from below Cairo, because from New Orleans to Cairo the train was all Pullman, and then they added day coaches for the people from Illinois who were making the trip to Chicago—around two hours in my case.

In those days you filled out your own Guest Check. This news seemed to subtly alarm my new companion. There was a sturdy pewter pencil holder with one of those stubby golf card pencils. I carefully printed out: “Pancakes and coffee.” The waiter picked up my order. He asked my companion, “What will you-all be havin’ this mornin, sir?” He replied, “I think I’ll have the same thing my friend here is having.” He could not have seen my order. He could not read or write.

Our orders arrived. Before me sat arrayed a majestic assortment of heavy pewter containers, which would not spill if the train rocked. Water. Coffee. Maple syrup. Cream. Half and Half. Sugar. I carefully poured syrup over my pancakes, and coffee into my cup. This was a big deal: The first cup of coffee in my life. I was king of the world. I dug into my pancakes. Something was wrong. They tasted bitter. I looked again at the table. If the coffee was on my pancakes, then where was the maple syrup? I blushed bright red. I was never going to admit my mistake to the waiter. Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I picked up my coffee cup and poured it over the pancakes. My friend studied this, and then poured his own coffee over his pancakes.

Say goodbye to the fail whale?

2008-11-08T14:57:00.004-06:00

Twitter downtime has been less of an issue lately, and Wired is claiming that the record site-usage during the election season might mean the site has corrected some of it’s technical problems.

Proving itself capable of handling traffic on one of the biggest days of its existence is an important step for the site, which has yet to nail down a revenue model but is growing rapidly and becoming more mainstream.

The service faced episodic downtime earlier this year, but Stone says they’ve developed a strategy that has been successful in preventing visits from the notorious "fail whale."

“Our approach over the last several months has been to find the weakest point of the system, fix it so it's no longer the weakest, move to the next weakest point and so on. This simple technique has vastly improved performance, reliability and capacity,” said Stone.

Another Election Result: Twitter Comes Through

Obama buys ads in video game

2008-10-14T18:46:00.002-05:00

Interesting.

Obama ad appears in Xbox 360 car racing game

Rhetorical Peaks article on CCC Online

2008-10-06T10:06:00.003-05:00

Last summer I worked with Matt King, the CWRL’s resident video game expert, on the html for an article describing the current status of Rhetorical Peaks, a video game for teaching rhetoric and writing. The article has recently been published by CCC Online. Check it out.

One-click DVD copying

2008-09-08T13:33:00.002-05:00

From the NY Times:

A vibrant movie rental market makes the threat of widespread DVD copying even more ominous. If people who lack technical knowledge can easily copy DVDs, Hollywood worries, they will stop buying DVDs and instead simply visit the local Blockbuster to “rent, rip and return.”

This is ridiculous. Nobody goes to Blockbuster anymore.

RealNetworks to Introduce a DVD Copier

via Silicon Alley Insider

Analysis of convention speeches

2008-09-07T14:26:00.002-05:00

Chris Wilson at Slate has posted an analysis of the speeches delivered by the candidates for president and vice president at the recent Republican and Democratic conventions.

Conventional wisdom holds that Democrats smile while Republicans attack—and that the speeches at the just-ended conventions reflect that. Yet the four major speeches of the last two weeks—those of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, and John McCain—paint nearly the opposite picture.

The Democratic ticket mentioned McCain far more often than Republicans mentioned Obama. Obama aimed far more barbs at McCain than McCain did at him. And both Biden and Obama paused for applause less often and spoke for less time (though much faster). Meanwhile, both Palin and McCain were careful not to mention the incumbent president's name—or that of his vice president—a single time.

I'm not sure about the methodology of the study and I’m not convinced that mentioning someone else’s name in itself constitutes an attack. Additionally, the information above ignores the fact that Palin led all speakers in the categories of “Barbs aimed at opponent.”

Anyway, it’s a nice start; hopefully more detailed analyses will start popping up elsewhere soon.