Sep

28

r.s.w., or: the fundamentals of being awesome

writing

Yesterday’s session of SI658: Information Architecture was dedicated to the teachings of Richard Saul Wurman (author, architect, founder of TED, and all around badass). We not only got to talk about him, we got to talk to him. Well, in a round-a-bout way, as our professor Dan Klyn was the one who did the talking over speakerphone, and we mostly did the listening and the laughing.

I will say, first, that the man has presence. Some of that may have been the fact that his voice was broadcast throughout the room, but I’d guess that he comes across larger than life no matter what circumstances you meet him under. I felt awe-struck listening to him, despite the fact that my understanding of his work was rather limited before last night.

In lecture, we learned that RSW’s method of IA can be structured like this:

An adaptation of Jesse James Garrett’s “The Elements of User Experience“

(via)

It’s the bottom three layers that really struck me, because they are principles by which I try to live my life, and I was surprised to see them come up as the foundational tools set down by the father of IA. It was incredibly validating to hear someone as accomplished and successful as RSW say that this, too, is how he structures his life.

1. Innocence and Ignorance

Also known as “beginner’s mind,” this is effectively the state of entering something with humble curiosity. “What is this thing?,” you ask yourself, “Why is it here and what is it made of? Where can I learn more?” The philosophy of Ignorance and Innocence means knowing that not understanding something does not mean you’re stupid, it doesn’t mean you’ve fallen behind, it doesn’t mean you’re missing out. It means that there is so much in the world to know. And here you are, at the beginning of something, with that knowledge at your fingertips. It means you have the opportunity to learn. Learning is at the very core of living, and the Ignorance/Innocence model means more learning, and hence more living.

2. The Importance of Failure and The Opposite Paradigm

Lesson one: Failure is just a part of success. Lesson two: Always look at the opposite side of what you’re trying to do. The point, here, is that we learn and create and succeed from the things we don’t expect to learn and create and succeed from. I also think of this as: Don’t get stuck. There’s always another way to do something as long as we don’t let ourselves get in our own way. As with Ignorance and Innocence, these principles urge you to enter into things with a certain level of humility. To accept failure as unavoidable and necessary, and to be willing to look at things outside of your expectations, means being okay with the fact that you don’t have all of the answers. Or rather, it means embracing the fact that you don’t have all of the answers.

3. Confidence and Terror

My favorite quote from RSW’s digivisit is the following:

“The balance of [terror and confidence] … are the two emotions that dominate my life … they’re the two you’re not supposed to have.”

He said this, and I could not nod my head enough. My road map through life, especially with school and with my career, has generally consisted of: “I am terrified of this thing I want but damn it I’m going to do it!” So far it’s worked out pretty well. I absolutely agree with RSW that this mix of fear and ego is a taboo. We’re not supposed to admit that we’re afraid. We’re not supposed to admit that we think we’re awesome. And to admit that we’re both unsure of ourselves and  sure that we will succeed in the end? For shame! We’re not supposed to say these things, and yet most people that I know feel exactly this way. We are scared, but we push ourselves because we believe we will succeed. And then we do. Because how else would anyone ever get anything done?

The last Nugget of Awesome that I’ll share from yesterday evening was when Professor Klyn asked RSW how he felt about getting permission, to which he replied:

“I give myself permission whenever the hell I want.”

RSW is not a man who needs other people’s endorsements on the things he does. He does them for himself. He will tell you that he didn’t mean to invent Information Architecture, he was just doing something that made sense for him, something he wanted to do. And yet, a field was born. He doesn’t ask whether other people agree with what he’s doing or think his ideas have merit, he just does them and hopes for the best. What a simple yet brilliant lesson: we can’t wait for people to give us permission. We can’t wait for someone to come along and push us into what we’re supposed to do. We have to build those things for ourselves, create our own path, live our own truth. It’s not about waiting, it’s about doing.

Posted by | 0 comments
Apr

03

bound vs. unbound: a preface, afterwards

writing

This is an experiment.

It is a thesis, a research project, a survey of Digital Humanities.

Also: a blog, a digital archive of thoughts.

It will be a printed PDF, and a bound book.

What happens when you take something meant to be traditional, something that fits neatly inside of the Academic Box, and execute it on a different platform? What happens when you smash together old-school and new media? Where do you end up when you play with the limitations and possibilities of bound forms of scholarship and unbound mediums of production?

Because I am writing on a field that is intersectional – digital + humanities – it seemed only fitting to work the digital into my humanities project. Working within a medium that we are studying allows us to understand it better, to get a deeper feel for how things play out in practical application. Blogging is only one small aspect of the digital world, but it can shed insight into what differences exist between writing a conventional essay versus writing piecemeal for the public eye.

For ENGL328 last year, where the seeds of this project were born, we read Anne Frances Wysocki’s awaywithwords: On the possibilities in unavailable designs (2005)*. She starts her essay by asking: “Under what conditions would you accept a [graduate research] paper handwritten in crayon on colored construction paper?” (I rendered a part of the subsequent assignment for that class in crayon, of course.) Wysocki ends, in part, with the following:

As we analyze and produce communications, we need to be asking not only what is expected by a particular audience in a particular context but also what they might not expect, what they might not be prepared to see. It is in the apparently unavailable designs … that we can see what beliefs and constraints are held within readily available, conventional design. (59)

Blogging, of course, has constraints – every method of authorship does. But these constraints are different from a traditional essay. The reading experience, too, is different when we choose alternate platforms. Different is something I’ve sought to highlight throughout the project. Our expectations of a word like “thesis” come apart when we choose these unavailable designs, when we try something new. It is with these ideas in mind that I have presented my thesis on my blog, in hopes that doing something different may lead us to question what we’ve been doing all along.

Enjoy.

*Wysocki’s lack of spacing in her title is intentional and meant to get her reader to question the constraint of word spacing and what effect it has on our reading experience. When I typed this out the first time, I accidentally put the spaces in – apparently my reading of it is “away with words.”

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

30

potential academia

writing

What is this, anyway?

Is this thesis of mine an essay? Is it a blog? What genre does it fall under? What happens when, in a couple of weeks, I use Blurb to turn it into a book? Can it be categorized at all?

One thing that this project has accomplished is the muddling of publishing models, of what we think of when we think “academic research paper.” This was intentional from the beginning, but the process has made clearer the difficulty in moving from something traditional to something digital. Or, rather, in defining that something. There are clear differences in how I write here, in this online space, than how I have written research papers in the past.

I wouldn’t, for instance, say “y’all” in a paper, but I say it here all the time.

I probably wouldn’t cite Google results or Urban Dictionary, but I’ve done that here, too.

There are no chapter headings, necessarily, and it can be read in any order.

Some parts of this project could be skipped entirely, if you were so inclined.

In the coming paragraphs I will cite two books, and in both cases I will link to their respective Google Book entries, instead of giving you a citation in MLA format.

When we move between genres of writing, our writing styles change. Our intentions in writing in different spaces lead to different outcomes, to different types of work. When I write a paper for class, I am writing in a very clear voice for a very specific purpose. When I write something on Twitter, my voice changes, because the point of that platform is not the same. Through his Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau demonstrates just how changeable voice really is – how you can say the same thing over and over again and sound entirely different. I could have written my thesis in the form of a hard-copy, start-at-the-beginning, 12-point-font, 5-paragraph format essay. The same information that I’ve included in my blog posts over the last few months would have become a very different creature had they been presented in a traditional genre. Then, too, I probably wouldn’t be writing this paragraph at all, as research papers don’t generally lend themselves to reflective entries.

In his essay Brief History of the Oulipo, Jean Lescure writes: “What the Oulipo intended to demonstrate was that these constraints [of literary form] are felicitous, generous, and are in fact literature itself. What it proposed was to discover new ones, under the name of structures” (173). They explored the possibilities of literature through new forms and new genres.

The Oulipo wrote “potential literature,” literature whose form existed only in the imagination.

To borrow from their ideas, I suggest this project as potential academia.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not the first person to write academically in an online space, nor am I the first person to present an academic project in digital form. However, as a part of a traditional English program, what I’m doing exists outside of the norm. When we open academia up to its own potentiality, new things happen. Here, in my blog/thesis/experiment, something new happened. An exercise in style, of sorts, a blending of mediums that has resulted in something of which the academic value remains to be seen, since I haven’t actually turned it in yet (ah yes, value. “value.” more on this next time.). Value aside, however, the point is that classification doesn’t always work the way we think it should. Our preconceived notions of form are bendable, and it is, quite frankly, exciting to bend them.

Heretofore, a thing that was published was a very specific thing. Our day and age, and the potential for different publishing models that come with it, has created a new set of possibilities that weren’t previously available to us. Again, as I’ve said before, when we let ourselves try new things, new things happen. When we drop our ideas of what something like a thesis should be, we discover what something can be. “Should,” ladies and gentleman, is an ugly word. It is a word that I think the Oulipo probably disapproved of, a word that holds us to defined expectations and a narrow belief system.

The world can be our shellfish, y’all, if we let it.

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

24

and how!

writing

As a follow-up to my last post, some quick thoughts on a few ways that programs can incorporate the digital world into their curriculum:

Collaborative Sites: Wikis, Google Docs, etc.

+ : brings new value and ease to the dreaded group work; displays real-time results; better tracking for profs.

Text Analysis: Wordle, etc.

+ : greater understanding of work; adds a new dimension of connection with the material; fun with visualization!

Online Presence: blogs, microblogs, website-building, etc.

+ : students will need a web presence in the future; drive to produce better work when it’s public; potential conversations with people outside of class about coursework.

Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter, etc.

+ : students already know how to use these sites; exploration of different potential for a familiar form; keeping in touch outside of class may spark more connection in class.

- : more time will have to be spent teaching and learning the tools; students may resist putting their work out for the world to see; higher levels of creativity needed by both students and professors when working with new methods.

(then again, these could go in the + column, too.)

Posted by | 0 comments
Mar

21

why digitize?

writing

I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of digital work in academic spaces that do not normally lend themselves to  this type of scholarship. There is a reason that Digital Humanities is a field unto itself – because it operates differently than the Humanities traditionally do. The boundaries aren’t necessarily solid and fixed, but there are distinctions that put them into two different camps.

I’m in favor of blurring the line a bit; I believe traditional Humanities programs should embrace the inclusion of digital consumption and production into their coursework.

This is not a statement without controversy. Academia is not quick to change; new ways of doing things can certainly be challenging for those who are perfectly content with old ways. And, of course, new ways do not always equal better ways. There is risk in change. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t, and the value in discovering which is which is not always compelling enough to make us budge.

However.

This is one area where I believe the value exceeds the risk, and where I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised if we give it a shot.

Here’s why:

  • Because that’s just the way the world is going.

We’re living in a digital world. This is a fact. It is a fact that e-readers are selling like hotcakes and that people buy music from iTunes more than the record store. It is a fact that people text and send emails and don’t write letters with pens and paper nearly as often. It is a fact that we’re constantly connected to the cloud and that things we knew previously as nondigital objects now exist in pixels.

These things will not change because some of us are not satisfied with them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a fellow English student lament over the state of the written word and how the Internet is killing literacy, etc. I have lots of opinions about those arguments, but my point here is that, well, that’s just the way it is. The Internet is not going anywhere. Neither are e-readers or iTunes or any number of other digitized versions of things. We have moved into a new arena of navigation with our world, and a big part of that revolves around previously uncharted technologies.

We can lament, or we can take action. That action could be to rally against digitization, and certainly this is a legitimate option. Or that action could consist of trying out these new things and seeing what happens – embracing the facts of our new age and exploring the outcome. If we’re going to live in a digital world, we might as well see what all the fuss is about.

  • Because students can relate to it.

The majority of undergraduate students are in their late teens or early twenties. These kids have grown up digitally connected . They understand this stuff in a way that even I, only a few years older than them, don’t, because they’ve been doing it all of their lives. Sure, not all young people use the same tools, and not all of them are in love with the digital world. But they get it, and for many of them it is simply a way of life. I never questioned television growing up, because there was one in my home as far back as I can remember. There were (and still are) arguments against television, but for me it was just a staple of life. The same goes for kids today with the Internet, with Facebook, with blogs, with texting, etc. For them, there hasn’t ever been anything else.

If these are the people we’re teaching, shouldn’t we be speaking to their experiences? There has got to be value in using tools that students understand intuitively as a means of getting them more engaged with their work. Doing more new media work means that the people who are getting the education will understand it better, because we’ll be speaking their language. More understanding = better education, every time.

Not to mention, if the greater world is moving more and more towards the digital, these are skills students are going to need in the future. For those students who don’t yet have an intuitive understanding of the digital for whatever reason, they’re going to need it eventually. If it’s educators’ jobs to provide students with the skills they’ll need in the workforce, then this necessarily includes some level of competency with digital tools.

  • Because there’s always room for improvement.

The argument for the incorporation of digital tools is not an argument against traditional tools. Incorporation =/= replacement. It shouldn’t, at least, and if it does, there’s a good chance that whatever tool disappears was on its way out to begin with. But the suggestion that “going digital” means completely eradicating anything nondigital simply doesn’t make sense. Sure, I have a Kindle that I love, but I also have a huge bookshelf in my living room that somehow just keeps acquiring new books (some might say “stop buying new books when you already own dozens that you haven’t read,” to which I would say: “pooh-pooh”). They are both important, they both bring me joy, they both serve a purpose in my life. I don’t automatically stop going to Borders because I’ve started shopping at Amazon.

Having a Kindle improves my reading experience. I believe that digital work will improve the classroom experience. We all want our fields of study to get better, even if they’re already good. We want them to be the best they can possibly be.  It’s important to look at all the ways that bettering may be possible, even if some of these ways are far outside of the box that we’re used to.

  • Because if we do what we’ve always done, we’re going to get what we’ve always gotten.

Trying new ways of doing things leads to greater levels of discovery, greater layers of understanding. Certainly there are new revelations that come out of traditional methods – otherwise, we wouldn’t still doing them, right? However, when we continue doing the same thing, we get the same types of results. There are only so many destinations that the same path can lead to. If I always take the highway, I can only end up at places that the highway goes.

When we try something new, when we step off of our usual path, we have no idea what the outcome might be. The possibilities become endless, and the results will be different than they’ve been. They might not be earth-shattering, but they will be different. Different may not equal better, and in some cases it may not even equal valuable, but I’d suspect that in many cases we’ll be quite intrigued by what we discover. At any rate, we’ll be working with new information, and that in itself is valuable.

We gain tremendous insight when we take a step back and question what we’re doing. This goes for all areas of life, not just academia, of course. When we do a thing because that thing is what we’ve always done, we risk missing out on something important. Adding new models of investigating, accessing, and creating information into our studies means that students and professors alike will have more to work with and greater chances of stumbling into uncharted territory. Digital tools can, and will, help make this happen.

Posted by | 1 comments
Mar

11

stories + science = win

writing

[Because I am a giant nerd, this is what I wore tonight.]

I went to an awesome event this evening at the A2 Library – Story Collider. Ben Lillie and Brian Wendt, the guys behind SC, are hilarious and charming in person, and they’ve come up with a fantastic creation. The idea is this: most of the things you hear about science tend to be boring and sterile. But science is not boring and sterile, so let’s get people telling their own personal stories about science.

Recipe for success, that.

Tonight was the first Story Collider event (collision?) outside of the New York area, and I was excited to be present for it. The room was packed, and if the vibe of the crowd is any indicator, these guys are on their way to what will hopefully be a far-reaching adventure. The speakers were fabulous. I’m always impressed by people who can get up in front of a room full of people and keep the crowd going, especially when it’s not a subject-oriented gig, and they’re not professional speakers. These were just people’s own tales from their own lives, small slices of how science has effected them.

I love stories.

I think I may love personal stories more than anything else, in fact. There’s no greater joy I get from interacting with people than when I get the chance to hear about something someone really loves. Whether or not the thing itself interests me, I am always captivated by the energy that radiates when people get a chance to share something that matters to them. Story-telling is an incredible thing.

So, make those stories nerdy, stick me in a room with a bunch of other people who can’t wait to hear more, and you’ve got yourself a damn fine evening. If this is something that sounds awesome to you, too, they’ll be back on July 15th.

Posted by | 0 comments
Feb

22

you got your digital in my traditional!

writing

I don’t think I’ve mentioned explicitly that this blog, in its current form, is the substance of my senior thesis project.

Yes, I’m blogging the cumulative work of my undergraduate career.

If that seems a little weird to you, too, then you may be a traditional scholar, like I’ve been.

When I thought “senior thesis” in the past, I thought: 30-40 page paper. I thought: research, write, edit, write, edit, (etc), submit. I thought of one form of writing and one form of publishing only. Traditional or bust, amirite?

Except, no. My project is on Digital Humanities, and if I’m going to be investigating a highly digital, highly experimental, emergent field of study, well then I better be digital and experimental and emergent myself. My background, however, is not in this area. My degree, when I graduate this spring (gulp!), will be in English Language, Literature, and Writing from what is arguably a pretty traditional English program. Branching out from what I’m used to has been exciting, and complicated, and one hell of a learning experience.

I didn’t know it would happen in exactly this way, but I am, as we speak, restructuring my own ideas about what it means to do academic work.

I’ll tell you a little secret: I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re not supposed to admit this in Academia, I don’t think. At least, not all out in the open where anyone can hear you. But I’m pretty sure it’s true more often, and for more of us, than we would have each other believe. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact, not knowing what I’m doing is a big part of the reason I chose to do this project in this particular way from the very beginning. I like things that are new, that are experimental. I like to look underneath rocks and see what I can do with whatever I happen to find. I like to explore.

However. Liking =/= easy.

It’s tricky, this opening up of my assumptions and expectations of scholarship. There are lots of questions that I don’t have answers for. Not fully formed answers, at least.

To wit: how do I measure what I am doing? This is not a traditional paper or project, so what is it supposed to look like? Is there a certain post count that is equivalent to 40 pages of linear argument? Do I count words? Paragraphs? Do I set a goal for a certain number of posts, and when I’ve reached that, I’m done? Do I copy and paste my posts into Word to keep track of length? When do I stop? How do I turn it in? Etc.?

To all of these: yes, no, and maybe, we’ll see. Yes, there are parameters. I couldn’t write three posts and call it a day. There are equivalency expectations put forth by the Honors College, and for good reason. A cumulative project has to have some degree of substance to be worth a damn, after all.

But, no, the measurements are not the same. First of all, plugging everything into word and calling it good when I reach 35 pages just wouldn’t fit in with the point of this project. It also wouldn’t take into account the different aspects of digital writing that traditional papers don’t incorporate. For instance: If I link to, say, 25 outside sources (or 60, or 200), and my readers follow those links, what then? Does that hold the same value as a reader looking up a cited reference in a bibliography? I don’t think so. For one thing, the ease of access to outside sources is sure to change the reading experience. A person could read half of my blog post, follow a link, be gone for half an hour, and come back to read the rest. Authorship and citation are interwoven with one another here on the Interwebs. What does that mean for the substance of my writing?

Then, too, is the publishing method. These posts are not edited by anyone but me. They don’t get reviewed by one or two or five people before I put them out into the blogoverse. With a traditional thesis, there are layers of writing and editing that happen by not only the author, but their advisor(s). Of course, I generally don’t hit “publish” as soon as I’m done writing; I let posts sit for hours or days, and re-read/edit them before I make them public. But no one else is responsible for the quality of my work except for myself, which means that my thesis will never be “polished” in the same way that a traditional paper would be, for the simple fact that there is only one of me.

The most fascinating question that I have yet to answer is that of the end point. This is a blog. More importantly, it’s a blog that I created for purposes other than my thesis. Which is to say, this project is not self-contained. When the time comes that I am “done” with my thesis work, I will still be writing here. There’s a good chance that I will still be writing here about the same subjects that I am writing about currently. I have no intention of abandoning the field of Digital Humanities and the question of traditional-meets-digital once I’m finished with my undergraduate degree. How do I incorporate the ongoing and never-quite-finished aspect of my work into something that I must turn in at the end of the semester?

The more I think and read and write, the more questions arise. None of this is simple, or easy. It’s kind of messy, it’s a little strange, and it’s certainly not going to be resolved in this one post. But these are questions that are important, not only to me, but to the myriad of students and scholars out there who will turn to digital creation more and more as time goes on. It may not be traditional, but it sure is fascinating.

(word count: 1,005 – 3 pages, double spaced)

Posted by | 0 comments
Jan

23

creativity is the new black

writing

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

(dear embedded video: if i have to clink a link to you, you’re not actually embedded. sincerely, frustrated geek.)

so, i realize that I’m a little behind the times on this one, given that robinson gave this talk in 2006. but it is, hands down, my favorite ted talk of all time. i’ve watched it a time or two (or three or four), and each time it inspires new ideas about education and society and a renewed passion for reconnecting with my own creative spirit.

my most recent thoughts:

the squandering of creativity in schools leads to generations of adults that are out of touch with their original purpose. your original purpose(s) can only be fulfilled if you are allowed to explore it, yes? and if traditional education is stifling the creative nature of many children, then those children grow into adults that have never been able to connect to what is real and true for them. the lucky ones – those of us that are aware that creativity is ingrained in us and that our path must include creative endeavors – have to fight like hell to get back in touch with these things. sure, there are a) people for whom this particular brand of creativity is unnecessary, and b) people who are fortunate enough not to have their spirits watered down. however, i agree with robinson’s premise generally – that many of us have been un-taught creativity in school. in simple terms, this makes me sad.

what makes me happy, however, is my next thought bubble: the tech industry is exciting to me because it seems to bridge this sad gap that we’ve created. science, meet play. the tech community, generally, believes in creating new things, in exploring, in playing. “let’s make up some stuff and see what happens,” it says. in many ways the basic values of tech are very similar to the basic values of the arts. the difference, though, is that technology is valued in a way that the arts are not.

certainly technology is not the only creative field, but it is a field that people pay attention to. it’s a field that is revered as legitimate, as necessary. it’s not viewed as frivolous or secondary the way that the arts often are. this means, necessarily, that people are paying attention to creativity in a way that they weren’t before, whether or not they are aware of it. the implications of this are potentially tremendous. if society is viewing a creative, playful field as vital to our culture, it could open up the door for the awareness that other fields of similar construction deserve the same respect and admiration.

what is also exciting are the places where the creative nature of technology is being injected into oft-neglected fields. i am thinking specifically of digital humanities. the humanities, as a whole, are an area that are being snipped away. funding cut, significance tossed aside. literature, history, language, art, theatre, philosophy, etc., are simply not valued the way that science, math, engineering, medicine, and technology are. but now, there is a new medium emerging, one that melts together the undervalued and the valued. a way of interacting with and studying what is looked at by some as dusty and old in ways that are decidedly not. two fields that in many ways center on the creative nature of human beings merging into something that is by its very nature a creative structure.

this is very, very cool.

i don’t know what the outcome will be, of course. will the playfulness of technology really open up people’s eyes to the importance of creativity? will people start to pay attention to the connections between fields they see as important and ones that have been neglected? will the inventiveness of technology spill over into our culture at large? will the owl ever stop biting the tootsie pop before he gets to four licks? the world may never know. what i know, however, is that robinson is right – creativity is being squashed. but i also know that in some ways, we’re finding it again. and that makes me very, very happy.

Posted by | 1 comments
© Copyright Erin Stratos - Theme by Pexeto