JAG-wire.net Blog

Intentionally Empathic

2009-10-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

I get it. I'm a social scientist. I think about everything.

I'm finding more and more this identity is overwhelming, in that the sociological imagination is not only permanently switched on my mind, but I'm not sure how to (or if I want to or could) switch it off. The same way in which I see myself situated within the world as a powerful actor who can influence the people and issues around him: I'm presented with a problem - a complaint, a question, a curious circumstance - and I look to understand it, and usually, solve it or make things better. I feel it's downright unethical to not to at least want to. So in the same way I obsess over social experience and individual actors and actions - I like to think a lot about what it means when I or someone else does or says something. I don't always realize the full ramifications of a statement or action, like all of us humans, but I'm usually actively thinking about some sizable portion of those occurring around me. I do this instead of reading for school.

I'm contrasted by my friends who suggest that this is 'over-analysis' or wonder why I always have to 'go so deep into everything all of the time.' They'd rather float about life, making statements about the weather or complain about things without any intention of envisioning a better world. They don't ask questions or wonder all that much about what others are thinking - it simply isn't important to them.

In research we talk about discerning intent - how we measure it, what cues we can examine to find it, or even the possibility or importance of capturing it. We can ask someone what their intention is, but it may be futile - they cannot possibly know everything that motivates their decisions, and the structured provisional truth they present us in explanation is built to its audience, mode of communication and the person's current feeling. Beyond that, regardless of how reflexive we might be - our intent is constricted to a realm of discourse - the way we talk about it in certain ways (social norms, language) and in some sense, people may only have free will to a certain degree within the bounds of how they make sense of reality.

So what struck me today was the way intention and empathy intersect. I've often wondered what fosters empathy. Intent implies purpose, an active action to desire and see to an outcome (that may or may not come to fruition). I'm so utterly concerned with investigating intent not because I think it will uncover some hidden truth (it may tell us a better story, though), but because I think by being concerned with the intentions of others we facilitate the construction of empathy (a reflection of concern for others, the ability to identify with their experience).

This rests on a value, a sort of social good. What would happen if everyone were a little more empathic? In some sense this is no different from seeking to understand the perspectives of others, but it's mitigated or encapsulated by action. That is discovering intent involves a communicative process - people making efforts to engage one another - starting with speculation, leading to questions and observation and ending, in, what may be something close to a spiritual belief for me, understanding similarities. I do think, at root, we have a lot in common with one another, when we take the time to find it, at least. We all have the ability to be empathic and seek this - and really this process is how we forge emotional maturity, I think.

And it's multifaceted. Some of this is explaining our own intentions and actions, putting them out there for others to relate to, inquiring about the intent of others, and, potentially, figuring out what they all mean together in the world we live in.

So I know this is a variation on a theme for me, championing the compassionate and assertive individuals of the world, but I'd like to entertain many ways of being that produce social good. So I'll ask all of you - how might someone develop empathy without taking action to understand one another's experience? Could it be done as well with just listening and observing, but not actively starting conversations and asking questions? Might we divulge empathy from texts and not live people>? What more can we find?

Musings with Tom Fairbank

2009-05-10T22:39:00.001-07:00

I recently asked one of my best friends where he gets his drive from - his unrelenting passion to work for himself and others.

He replied that he focuses a great deal on those who have done more than him - role models, both in history and in the contemporary, which leads him to set high expectations and found inspiration. He's managed to get into the habit of asking himself what he could do better, which makes it a cycle.

Doesn't seem too outstanding if you just read it like that, but if you knew him, you'd know why I asked. The guy sleeps for a mere two hours a night, works in a downtrodden school full of kids getting screwed over by our education/class/governmental system and will not hesitate to care intensely about anyone at any moment, homeless person or family member, if they ask. And even sometimes if they don't. I have never met a more compassionate and driven human being.

In contrast, I find that I'm I'm some blend of my own expectations and those that others hold for me, which are necessarily intertwined. Further, most of my role models and would-be mentors don't have any time... for me or anyone else, which is probably a bad sign :)

My friend pointed out that it may not matter if what you know about them is real or an exact 'truth,' the perception of it can sometimes be motivating enough. That is if I create a hero out of someone that might still be viable inspiration, even if I barely know them. And I do this often. Unfortunately I have the bad habit of getting to know them and then watching my hope and positivity be brutally murdered in front of me. If you read about someone in a book though, this is at least less likely to happen.

Anyway what this led me to a really neat question. If we asked all of the outrageously driven people we know what makes them go - what commonalities would we find?

This also led to a question of drive and progress towards what. As Tom said:

"I don't know if we should look for that perfect job, perfect person, or perfect day. What if instead we choose to see the perfection in what is already in front of us?"

I of course replied that we have to do both - recognize what's great in the present (and past) and also work towards a better future. Often one will make us appreciate the other - trying the new greener grass makes us appreciate the old and recognizing current opportunities leads us to striving for more, it's almost modesty vs. aspirations. And then it came - that classic statement, that we need balance. To which Tom replied:

"...because lets be honest the idea of balance is a boring, an easy answer that says almost nothing."

WHAM. But yeah, he's right. Just saying we need balance and shutting down an issue with it doesn't really churn the dialectic. The question of balance, that's where the action is at!

I kind of want to say we're probably better off as a society by looking for more (or better or progress) by default, and that recognizing what we have is secondarily at best. We can find all kinds of explanations for that (Calvinism, capitalism, evolution, economics, spirituality), but it raises the question of what we mean when we say better. In some sense it's probably the age-old eastern vs. western thing with an accent. What would the world look like if we were all, by default, more prone to appreciate what we have instead of striving for more? Would we be more or less passionate? Would we be less assertive? Would change happen is easily?

In the middle of this, I burst out:

"See this is freaking scholarly exchange! not reading a book! You can't talk about stuff like this in academic research and bringing it up in the classroom only makes you the annoying one - but it's stuff that really matter and determines what we do with our lives!!"

And also later a fun exchange:

"Tom: Again, that's where we differ. In practice we are very close, we both do things to 'improve the world' but I would rather see beauty in the now and you would rather create it in the future. The problem with your belief is that the future is always the future. My plan allows for perfection in the present.

Jeff: I guess I don't accept perfection, present or future."

What we came to, ultimately, though, was this. If we try to imagine a person who's all about appreciating the awesome things in their life, as well as striving to find and make new awesome things, we think of a really intense and driven person. Well there we go: Appreciation is the fuel and striving for improvement is the direction.

A Plan for Mentoring in CI - Cohorts

2009-03-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

I couple of Thursdays ago I attended a program called "Mentoring Inside/Out" that took place in the Illini Union as a sort of conference in the form of theatrical performances and workshops. It was put on by the graduate college and a group called the CRLT Players, a cadre of researchers who investigate some of the issues and difficulties of mentoring in several forms and break open the discourse with acting, role playing and dialogue.

I actually initially entered the event thinking I could walk away with a few ideas about how I might better connect to and advise Masters students, but rapidly realized it was mostly focused on PhD students... and in turn started to relate my own confused experience caught between Sociology and GSLIS. Several key distinctions were made clear over the course of the program, which evolved between sequences of acting and audience response sessions.

One of these was that there is a definitive difference between an adviser and a mentor; often the two are not the same and arguments are to be had as to if they should be. Some feel that they cannot appropriately advise students without really knowing them, whereas others feel like this may be too much commitment or taint decisions and honest feedback. But if our advisers are not our mentors, who are they?

In my own experience I've actually found more guidance from others: teachers who take an interest in what I do, older students who can offer wisdom, work advisers with give me a long leash and the like. This in part has much to do with what happened to me in Sociology, but also perhaps the biggest obstacle to fostering good mentoring relationships: time. Professors aren't given much in reward for spending time and caring about students and while many of them find arrive at a sort of 'feel good' (or worse guilt or defacto obligation inspired) motivation it's far from sufficient.

A lot of the problems also arise from miscommunication and misinformation. Professors often aren’t aware of what students know, need to know, and most importantly, what they’re thinking and feeling. And vice versa. Students don’t know that they should ask a professor in advance to meet with them instead of just ambushing them in the office, and sometimes they don’t know what to prepare for a session, or even what questions they should be asking. With changing rules and class offerings professors don’t always know what they should be telling their students to do. Many of them are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with informal relationships with their advisees or can't relate to them. Some have trouble telling a student they don’t have time for them.

Other factors find their way into the mix, like assistance for junior faculty, support and identification for students of color or other minority status (such as women in engineering), and people with split appointments or affiliations.

I couldn’t help but relate all of this to GSLIS. In certain areas we have very strong connections between PhD students and professors. Other areas don’t. In general we have very little going on between MLS and PhD students, largely because of the professional nature of the program, though this shouldn’t be the case as many of our PhD’s were previously in library science. Many of the gaps have to do with time, priority and stage in life– who wants to hang out with 20-somethings when you have a kid at home or a spouse to see? Much of the work the PhD's do has nothing to do with libraries or practice. There are other symptoms of issues, too. If I walk down the halls of GSLIS I see only a few doors open for random visitors. This may be a reflection of personalities, but also of the environment. Only some professors offer regular office hours for anyone to come visit, and of those only a few post them publicly online. We have a couple of staff members who are formally tasked with taking care of advising and mentoring Masters students formally, but this leaves the PhD’s on their own. The PhD's make some effort to bring students together with a Friday symposium but this is typically pretty small and doesn't involve many Masters students or most of the social science related faculty (they are of course invited).

These challenges suspended, the benefits of mentoring are incredible. Most people who’ve found their way to where they are owe much of it to the time and investment in them by others. The informal networks, the people who dare to care deeply about one another, the conversations had over a cup of coffee (or beer?), all of these play an underrated role in fueling inquiry and learning. In some sense it’s our duty, but how can we institutionalize this so it’s not such a drag on people who have culturally and temporally staged inhibitions?

One answer, I think, is what I know as cohorts. I’ve seen them in a few places around this University, and hear they operate well elsewhere. The general idea is to take a given area of research and structure people around this. The effort might span multiple departments and could involve varying funding, mostly dependent on fit and convenience. You might have one or two guiding professors, a few PhD students (who would be their advisees) and possibly a number of Masters students. Together they would form multiple layers of work distribution, guidance and productivity. The professors would provide the overall foresight to the operation, working with PhD’s to invent projects and publish papers on common interests (topics initiated by either, not just professors), which gives the collaboration strength. It’s worth a professor’s time to publish and the new perspectives and related areas of interest brought in by PhD students could help them to widen their range of influence and connection. The PhD students in turn would receive vital experience leading research projects, establish their first published works, and really actively participate to learn what it’s like to be an academic. They could also help to manage and advise masters students, who could spread the load of large-scale projects by conducting research work and providing additional feedback. The entire group would be connected informally as well, sometimes sharing the same projects and papers, sometimes not, engaging in social and personal interests together, attending reading groups, speakers, discussions, conferences and more. This kind of collaboration could be unrelated to funding sources, potentially, as participants could fulfill these needs with other jobs, such as positions teaching, administration or working at jobs outside (such as in the libraries at U of I).

I’m not the first to have this idea. Martin Wolske wants to establish a studio class that would call in graduates from many departments to work together on independent study research and provide feedback to one another. This is a good start, but also only a partial answer—there’s no professor advisers to mentor the students and it doesn’t have any teeth because it doesn’t result in published papers, the hard currency of academia. Martin would like to include grant writing as part of the class, though, and it does, however, engage most of the practice and informal learning opportunities mentioned in the scenario above.

I’d like to see something like this happen in Community Informatics. I know there will be buy-in from Masters students (it can be an activity of the club, essentially), and several of the PhD’s have expressed some interest to me. The missing link, right now, is the professor leadership. Martin’s class may end up filling the hole, but ultimately I think we need faculty support for something like this to be successful and sustainable.

My hope is to create a community informatics research group. We already have a few instances of things happening that are somewhat like this, but I think we could do better. As we walk into next year we’ll have several PhD students pretty strongly associated with our area of research, and I suspect the timing could be right, even if we face some challenges.

Time will tell! I'm starting by talking to a few people about the idea...

Meandering Thoughts

2009-02-15T22:51:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to read this horridly dry book on social research methods tonight. Thus I'm blogging. It seems like the further I get into grad school the less I like reading... A simple 10 page paper full of new ideas or problems can get me thinking and scribbling for hours, stomaching hundreds of pages becomes an exercise in rejection, skim reading or other futile actions. I find my mind spends at least as much time thinking about the various people and social circumstances in my life as it does on research, classes and work combined. I wonder if I should have been a social worker.

Anyway I was thinking about my community informatics concepts class from last semester. I played a rather strong - no overbearing - role in it. It felt like I was in a room full of terrified mutes but looking back on it and knowing what I do now, I think it's largely that people didn't like me. I think I may have actively ruined participation with my intensity. Anyway, it's this reason I need to be in PhD classes, but besides this I was thinking about this and feeling bad. I want to apologize to all of the shy and quiet people and those who might have felt squelched because of my all too often open mouth. But what would I be apologizing for? To make myself feel better. And that's rather shatty. So my current theory is a new metric of apology. Generally, one should only apologize when they will make the other person feel better at least as much as themselves.

This clearly leaves apologizing to (forgiving?) oneself off the docket, but still.

As my studies go, I've come upon another revelation: Facebook was easy.

I mean seriously! I was an insider in to the community (or at least one of them) and could find all kinds of different social and psychological theories that would apply to the way people behave online. Data-collecting techniques were clearcut - find a theory and a bunch of questions, and observe, interview or survey. Done.

Now I'm essentially enacting as a nonprofit consultant for social service institutions. I'm pretty inexperienced and bad when it comes to figuring out their needs - and all of my leadership experience has been with people pretty similar to me (rich students). Suddenly I have to figure out how these places work, design programs for them involving technology training (pretty much on my own, I have 2 other students to help me), and while that, to me, seems like a worthwhile 'project' or challenge, it's considered elementary. Never mind that establishing relationships and workable programming is scary, I'm supposed to evaluate all of this and keep it housed in scholarly questions and theory. My advisor warns me to stay away from being 'too practical' and I increasingly worry that I'm going to turn tale and run back to Internet studies for my dissertation.

Sounds like I need to have a conversation with Ann Bishop, but then she sometimes struggles to find acceptance in academe, and she's a tenured professor.

Once in a while I think about radically changing my trajectory, nabbing an MLS and running off to the nonprofit/saving people world. And then I remember that this economy is (supposedly?) disastrous and I'm wildly privileged. I just don't feel like there's a lot of academic guidance or support for me right now, I guess. Which worked well when I was studying Facebook, the thing I understood and no one else (around me at the time) did, but not so well when I'm trying to study something that's new and uncomfortable to me.

The good news, though, is that my social life has managed to stabilize a bit post-Mandy.

Time to go back to reading...

Connectors, revisited

2009-02-03T19:38:00.000-08:00

Some of you may be familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's famous set of archetypes that are the key to social epidemics (social movements that sweep very quickly over a nation or group of people). He outlines salesmen (people who can convince you to do anything) and mavens (people who know a lot and like to share knowledge) and connectors (people who know a lot of people and bridge different types of people/groups together). The notion has gotten a lot of attention and spurred a lot of argument. Regardless of the usefulness of the typology or classification we can generally agree that there are traits in people that might make them connectors (relative) in almost any group.

I was giving this some thought tonight. I've always considered myself a connector - particularly because I'm an extrovert and leader and I know (and like!) a lot (different) of people. I tend to make invitations and initate contact and start groups. But I've often struggled with getting groups to be cohesive once the basic connections between individuals have been formed. It makes me wonder what a connector does, exactly. Like in some sense an alternative measure of a connector is the type of person who would be interested (not just willing and able) to go to an event or break into a new group alone. I'm sure we can think of many people we know that refuse to go to a given event, especially when it's recreational, unless they know someone there. Moreover some go so far as to need certain people there.

And this spurred me to thinking about who those people are. I think there may be another class (if you will) of connectors who don't initiate (usually anyway) or may not be the most outgoing or outspoken. They are instead the ones who still know a lot of people, but know how to make them feel comfortable. I'd like to think I can do this but the reality of my personality is that I'm intense, I'm often overwhelming, and if I really would like a person to be a real friend I expect a lot of them. And this is too much to face up to for some people. I'm often action-oriented and while I like to talk about feelings or 'just hang out' I'm usually more interested in creating something or discussing a topic towards some greater benefit. I'm overtly passionate, and especially interested in people, which is a little freaky sometimes to those who aren't.

Anyway thinking over my friends I can point out several who've been sort of complementary connectors to me. I bring people in and make the initial group/event formation (whatever it is, club, social, class group, etc...) and they end up making that person feel extra comfortable and bringing out the best in them. My X played this role in my life for the past year or so, which ispart of why I'm sort of floundering now trying to figure out what to do with my social life.

So where do I go from here? I suppose I could try to work on making people feel more comfortable, but honestly my personality is what it is, the fragile, picky or undependable ones are always going to be a problem. I think maybe a better direction is to show more appreciation for the connectors I know who make it their job (overtly or covertly) to create a welcoming rapport with others. Meanwhile I can continue to keep a positive hat on.

I won't make any specific shout-outs to people at GSLIS, but there are several of you who I think really fill this role. Thank you.

Bloglets

2009-01-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

So I keep accumulating little snippets of items and issues I want to blog about, writing them down, and then putting them off forever. So to help deal with this I've decided to write little blurps in series, much like I did in "Shotgun Blast" a while back. Okay here we go:

Babies in the Doc Study
As many of you know I'm a baby when it comes to comparison to other doctoral students, both in sociology and library science. In fact one of my friends in GSLIS has a daughter my age. Weird, huh? Yeah well nearly all of them are married and several have kids, which isn't a big deal, except one of the students has now made it a habit of bringing her small child with her to work. He's little, probably less than a year, and is typically pretty happy and well behaved. My issue is not with the baby, but what he does to what I would normally consider to be a place of scholars and quiet study. Every doc student but myself (and perhaps the detached foreign students) lord over the little baby and fuss about him for hours. I can't possible work with it... I find it downright annoying. I got to thinking about it, though, and the feminist inside of me says I should shut up and deal with it. Why? Because women are often tasked with taking care of kids, and to exclude them from access to advanced degrees on account of it is something of a form of discrimination. So as much as the herd of fussing old PhD students and somber baby might annoy me, I should probably appreciate her right to bring him along, it makes our school a friendly place to young mothers. I think what perhaps bothers me more is the contrast it brings out between myself and the older mass of graduates. I'm so very different than most of them.

Urban Prairie Archeology
I had the chance to sweep down to East St. Louis last November and work with the Katherine Dunham Archival society. I dubbed the experience "Urban Prairie Archeology" because it was such a strange endeavor. East St. Louis has areas that are sometimes referred to as Urban Prairie, which is when buildings and empty lots are overgrown with prairie grass because of neglect and environmental factors. Archeology comes into the mix in a unique form - we were rescuing documents and artifacts from storage houses that contained many items belonging to the venerable Katherine Dunham, a female black scholar and anthropologist who traveled the world and expressed what she learned in the form of dance. She ran a dance company and retrieved a number of pieces of art from countries around the world - Haiti, China, etc... Unfortunately much of this material hasn't been preserved or sorted and instead packed into small run-down houses that are infested with animals and invaded by the elements. Our job was to venture into these houses and search through a mass of junk for valuable items dating back to the early 1900's. The experience was invigorating, we were able to save some community history, a worthwhile cause.

My Digital Literacy
Occasionally I think back to my education and wonder how I came to be so technical. I didn't really learn much of what I know in school. Or did I? Certainly none of my classes ever taught me how to use programs or work on digital art but many of them provided me with absurdly good inquiry-based and self-led learning opportunities. I was able to make videos and websites and required to integrate them into the traditional learning objectives present in most of my classes. It wasn't perfect and none of the instructors ever really understood half of what I did but in some ways it was the best possible way I could have learned much of what I did. I also came to remember a teacher - the only one who ever really successfully integrated computers into the classroom - from my junior high. He let me read a Star Wars book for a book report, something no English teacher or my mother would have ever considered worthwhile learning. It wasn't about the book's quality or difficulty - it just wasn't considered valuable from institutional eyes. I was supposed to read Shakespeare to To Kill a Mocking Bird. Anyway, Mr. Block was all about encouraging students to explore what they found interesting and engage them on their own level with relevant topics. He brought Legos into science class and we were encourage to play games on the computers and also use them for science and exploration. I never found another teacher to so seamlessly and effectively blend computers into class like that. Not until grad school. I should find out what he's up to now!

That said, school really didn't influence my digital literacy all that much. Our Packard Bell 1995 computer provide me with art/animation sequencing programs that I made strategy games and FPS narrative robot stories out of, architecture and landscape design software that resulted in mansions and gardens, and I even used MS paint to create Battlemech blueprints, pixel by pixel.

Oh and that whole Web2.0 thing? Pictures, message communities, blog-like editorials, travel journalism? Yeah I was doing all of that on www.jag85.com long before Facebook, Flickr and Blogger. Sad that I was made fun of so vehemently for it, these days it's ordinary.

I lived in virtual communities online, practicing writing skills and playing characters while imagining and creating universes in my mind. I modified game systems and shared my innovations - character sheets, programs, and new rule systems - with people from all over the world.

And all the while this was at odds with my mother, who saw everything that I did as treacherous and unhealthy. She thought that the exposure to violence would drive me to hurt others and that the time spent on computers would prevent me from acquiring people skills. And here I stand, one of the most extroverted people I know (online and off!) looking to help other people for a living.

I have to give her credit, actually. Without her to oppose (and prove that I wasn't a bad person or mistake of a child like she made me think I was) I wouldn't have come to where I am now.

And for the record my mom now feels horrible about how she treated us as kids. She was a mixed up and insecure person stuck in a world of rich housewives all concerned with appearing upper class. She had a poor relationship with her mother growing up and has struggled over her views of equality, gender roles, and common good. A lot of what she did was because she didn't have confidence, and had even less control.

So where did my digital literacy come from? In terms of people - school, my mother, and, well, the internet. In terms of the abstract (in parallel) - drive, defiance, and curiosity.

You Are Missed...

2008-11-27T01:39:00.000-08:00

Be assured my mission is not to elicit guilt or play pogo stick atop your already immense and growing burden... but I miss you.

Strangest of times and circumstances I know. Happy Thanksgiving, I'm sure your family is a much welcomed solace and sanctuary. I still watch from afar, with at least as much as proverbial internet-born books of faces can afford me.

Last glimpse you were swimming, in at least a couple of ways. Think I can join some time?

I'm also bringing back a hefty helping of my childhood in a car full of Legos...

If I don't hear from you I might churn up something more drastically creative and figure a way [someone] could help me plop it on your door step.

Find me. You know how.

...

:)

(unrelated: coming for whenever/winter break - babies and doctors, urban prairie archeology, more...)

Shotgun Blast

2008-11-08T11:33:00.001-08:00

I decided to break open my blog piggy bank and see what was inside:

I often talk about how much I value assertiveness and outgoing people, provided that they're honest and not too negative. I've been wondering if maybe what I'm talking about is how much I value other driven leaders. There are plenty of outgoing friendly people who go out and party but don't really care about others or the world.
My roommate watches A LOT of TV. For him it's great, he can sit and code on his laptop for hours on end in front of the tube. TV bugs the crap out of me (especially mindless negativity [Southpark] and death news), so I usually go back into my room and close the door. It got me to thinking - I usually identify myself as part of the multi-tasking generation who likes copious multimedia feeds and yet I can't deal with TV. I pay attention to it too much and it has commercials that interrupt the story (if there is one) all of the time. I greatly enjoy watching TV episodes that I choose to download that come without interruptions, just like I listen to MP3's on random instead of radio. In total it's more about sustained narrative, not jumpy disconnected bits of information. Maybe I'm more old-hat than I thought.
This was further emphasized the other night when I was talking to several people online who could have all hung out together. At the time I knew of 5 people in different spots who were being social (online) but didn't want to be social in person. Granted group hang out is different but back before ICT's these people would have had to hang out in person and I think I would have preferred that situation. I know technology enables us to be social in ways that we might not have been able to otherwise but I think it's also, on the whole, been more of a way to allow people to be passive and introvert and that bugs me. Maybe I'm less young and technology-minded than I thought, at least when it comes to people.
I've decided my value in creation should be better described as value in creative, fun and passionate creation, not obsessive productivity. I like people who are driven in joyous ways, not super efficient cogs.
The election reminded me - there's no information about local judges up on the internet. In fact I think they have identity management or protection going on, you can barely even find them on Google. I can Google my neighbor and find out more. Places like Judgapedia have tried to cover this but are far from filled out. I know we probably shouldn't categorize them by Republican or Democrat or Green but I would definitely like to see a decision history and their stance on issues. If citizens are expected to vote yes or no for them we have to know something about them and one of the biggest places young people get information is the internet. DUH. A battle for another day.

Excitment Refresh (Facebook has ruined romance)

2008-10-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

So I had the chance to go visit an amazing childhood friend tonight and we hung out talking... he's probably one of only 3 or 4 people in the Universe that I can do that with - sit down without food or activity at hand and talk with endlessly, it's a comfort I've learned to cherish. Anyway as we were talking the topic came to his excited interest in a girl he's met in the Quaker group he belongs to who sounds unreasonably cool (she wrote a book! and has a had a really interesting and deviant life). He was thinking about telling her that he'd like to see her outside of a Quaker meeting sometime, etc... effectively ask her out. As we were talking I brought up the possibility that she could be seeing someone already, and Tom had thought about it but didn't know. But what I remember most is just how joyful he was about the excited possibility of a person he likes - an opportunity, a connection, a thrill, the prospect of so much happiness!

I didn't know this sort of thing still happened these days. First off, I really, really (and I mean really) miss the days when I could actually ask a girl out. Not that I'm afraid to or unable to (well okay I'm seeing someone so it'd be downright unethical, but that's not the point here), it's that I've learned to get better at it. I liked the days when it would be the moment where you felt as if you had just jumped off the high dive (or off the 40 ft ledge canyoning) and didn't know what was going to happen. Pure concentrate excitement, anxiety, thrill, joy, all mixed together.

Now-a-days the procedure is different. First off, directly asking a girl out is against the rules. I know not literally but there does seem to be a social norm established, it's creepy to be that up front with someone, unless you're some dashing lad who plays basketball or sings acappella. I've had individual women argue that this is different for them but my observation is that on the whole it's not cool by most women's standards. Most girls will shit a brick and desperately find an excuse to dodge you, quite visibly so if you do it in person. So what do we do? Trickery, step-by-step:

1) Find the person on Facebook, see if they're single. No mystery in this regard anymore, and in fact I miss it so because it gives a false sense of permanency. People are no longer a questionable option - if you see they're dating on Facebook then you're ethically obligated to stay the fuck away.
2) Invite them to an event with mutual friends or a large scale public activity that's little 1-on-1 face time or pressure. Talk to them a little more than might be out of the ordinary at this event but without really revealing your interest, for if you do they will shit a brick and you'll be back to square one.
3) Find them on AIM (or Facebook or Gchat or whatever) and start talking to them about a common subject (question about class, their opinion on something non-political, etc...) and eventually evolve the conversation into something more meaningful.
4) Ask them out to a non-threatening activity, most common is lunch or coffee, but more creative versions in my past have been skating around with Inline Insomniacs or going to build a puzzle together at the library.
5) Rince and repeat the above until you're fairly brick-proof and then you might think about actually asking them out on a real date. Maybe.

And honestly, I think this system flat-out sucks. I used to say fuck it and was bold and asked girls out and tried not to be dodgy. But it resulted in an endless stream of rejections and let-downs and a lot of depression. So after a while of that I tried various remixes of the misdirection bullshit game above and had a lot of success. My current relationship is actually as a result of this sort of thing, and I'm not particularly proud of it.

As happy as I am for Tom to have found a girl mystery and a new source of hope, I'm still sick and tired of a world where only guys ask out girls and being forward and honest with one another is considered creepy, not compassionate.

I really do like Facebook - on the whole - I like that it presents us a whole new level of information. But really I think it's inadvertently helped to perpetuate this potentially sexist norm and a lot of passive or indirect type behavior. The thrill of discovering someone through asking them out on a date is immediately diminished from the get-go simply because you already start off knowing if they're available. Sure you avoid the embarrassment of asking someone out that is in a relationship, but you also avoid the flattery, the excitement and dammit I fucking like getting reamed once a while it helps me remember I'm alive. It makes the times that it does work out all the more worth it and I've learned to respect the people who can look you in the eye and actually say no. We don't feel comfortable asking a person out until we check them out on this twisted social ecology. Girls use it as a defensive mechanism to keep guys away from them, in fact - mark their relationship status and suddenly they can feel safe. I mean hell we even somehow declare a relationship real when it's hetero and on Facebook (nevermind the LGBT discrimination here, or the age-plurality complex).

So a lot of complaining about passive women and gender roles, I know, my usual, right? This might be my best unsung argument for denouncing Facebook yet, is that it helped to keep dating dishonest, indirect and introvert.

Maybe someday we'll see a gender-equality universe where women are just as likely to ask out men as vice versa and Facebook won't be the biggest cock-block in town... I'll hedge my bets with the LGBT rights movement.

Signing out for the night, positivity will return later, I swear.

Facebook Friends, False Connections and Social Norms

2008-10-21T16:40:00.000-07:00

I noticed a friend 'defriended' me the other day on Facebook, which normally wouldn't be a hugely new or life-shattering event... except that this person happened to be someone who I really like and used to be really close to. It's not uncommon to lose weak contacts like people I knew in classes or back in high school (with a friends list as big as mine I've actually noticed if I make small changes to my profile like politics or relationship status I can lose friends), but this one was different. We had some falling out somewhere over the digital medium in semi-recent history and it got me all upset and thinking about how the act of severing a connection on Facebook could really be a strong statement, especially when they're far away and FB might be the only viable connection you have to them anymore.

I mean we talk about stalking and whatnot on Facebook but I've noticed that many people have a small group of people that they like to watch from afar on Facebook. Maybe that person doesn't really know them very well or they're afraid of being confrontational or they don't even like them that much but they're interesting - it's nice to follow their life without having to become directly involved in it. It's a fake connection though, created by the technology and not by the actual relationship you have with the person.

Anyway a friend of mine noticed and empathized with me because she had been recently defriended too - but by someone she sees occasionally in person. She had no idea why but was worried if there was some sort of problem she didn't know about. It's an awfully passive-aggressive way to indicate to someone that you don't like them. We got to talking about the messages such an action might send and I concluded that hers wasn't a legitimate concern because the person who defriended her was older (think 40's) and not a 'Facebook native' and therefore couldn't possibly understand what message he sent her with such an action. My friend, however, I felt definitely knew what kind of damage she would do.

But as I later came to understand, that may not actually be all that accurate. As more people from different countries, generations, and life experiences join Facebook they bring with them new ways of understanding it as a social environment and communication tool. And that includes the meaning of 'defriending' - just like society at large Facebook is probably developing a plurality of social norms. Some people take it more seriously and find it more meaningful than others and there may be some variance in immerse (everyday cognizant) use. I still do think that this correlates with age closely but much like the notion of digital natives it's probably much more of a population than a generation.

The bigger question is what to do about the people who don't agree to the social contracts and norms established by the youth population who made Facebook huge. How do we get everyone on the same page?

My friend, by the way, did eventually talk to the person who defriended her and figured out it was more done on accident and not intended as an aggressive move. I probably won't ever hear from the person who dropped me again...

Shaking Up the Blog

2008-10-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

So in the past this blog has been intended to serve as a dynamic introduction for my personal-professional website, JAG-wire.net. I've tried to make large posts periodically, written in a verbose and clever (if not mildly nonsequetor) style, illustrating my 'faffing about' in Graduate school. Unfortunately I write these sorts of entertaining blurbs best when I have enough time to really consider them and they're most often a sort of report-in newsletter kind of format with a few questions here or there. After going several months without really hunkering down to chisel out a post I decided it was time to retool the format. As a preamble I've been writing down little snippets of ideas that come by and flirt with me throughout the day. They're all things I'd like to write about but wouldn't exactly fit in a personal-professional blog that's meant to showcase my development in academe.

But let's face it, nobody reads something so stagnant and it doesn't do me much good to write it. So from now on I'm going to start posting up fragments, humor, curiosities, and drama that intersect with my mind. It'll be notably more personal, more offensive, and probably a lot more interesting. So long as the wrong professors don't find their way to it I should be okay... and if they do, oh well, I'm not really interested in hiding who I am.

We'll see how long I can keep it up but I think it'll be considerably easier to do! I'll start it off with my accumulated list.

In a cage match between a library, website, and Facebook... who would win?

2008-05-25T00:02:00.001-07:00

So it would seem summer ambushed me. No, no, it's not that I didn't see him coming. In fact I was anticipating his arrival with jubilance. What I didn't expect is just how close to bubble-gum in my hair summer would be in relation to research and writing. That is, if papers, databases, and interviews were a haircut. Despite the fact that I've begun to comb-over my metaphors, as it stands the Grea-Council of Masters paper readers have given me their final requirements for the final draft. So maybe three days worth of trudging through my paper and some new sources stand between me and that degree. I've been putting it off like most people do taxes. Instead my life has been a whole lot of websites and web work (after I got the rancid left-over grading aftertaste out of my mouth), volleyball and skating, recording (sounds and sights!), games (electronic and board), and friends, lots of them. I've got to call a hoard of libraries and ask them about their computer resources next week for another in-process paper, to boot. Come Summer Session II (in a week or so) I'll begin work formally transcribing interviews and collecting multimedia for a community informatics project. In theory I ought to be worried about getting all of the work done in time... but it's summer man!

Becoming a Master... still

2008-03-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

So my Masters paper, or at least a solid draft of it, was completed sometime last semester. Why then, you ask, have I not posted it all over the web in some sort of glory-kidnapping extravaganza? Have I become a little more modest in my old age? Heavens no! Am I perhaps realizing that most professional academics don't study something considered as non-serious as Facebook? No, actually it in fact makes a superb recipe for interesting conversation. No, I've come to a bit of a crossroads. Over time the paper grew forth from a number of sources and managed to expand its borders to take over all kinds of areas and interests, some more effectively than others. I've come to a point where I have to split apart the front section, which is largely theory-rich and reads much like an area exam, from the back half, which is data and statistics derived from the two year study of usage and privacy. Now the task is to do this gracefully and with any luck the survivors (or at least one of them) will earn me a degree.

Shift Happens

2007-11-04T18:27:00.001-08:00

After realizing just how long it had been since I had updated JAG-wire I read over my previous post and had a good laugh with myself. In the beginning of the year I had this idea of not only doing an MA paper, but doing three big papers - including data from surveys, interviews, and content analysis all while reading tomes in the kitchen sink. It would seem my youth is showing - I didn't realize just how much work it is to research, write, teach, begin a PhD and try maintain a happy life. Beyond this it turns out I had more than enough material in my multi-year Facebook data set to push out a paper, even if it's not a study as good as all of the ones I keep trying to find time to read. So here's the thing: I'm losing track of my dream of an adventure in altruistic academe and really need to get it back.

All of this Facebook hubub is wonderful - I mean I even got to meet my quasi-heroes danah boyd and Fred Stutzman at the ASIS&T conference the other week (oh and turns out my STS theory might not be a load of crock!) - but what happened to my dream of getting a PhD in helping people? The first shock was finding out that Sociology here has little to do with anything domestic outreach related, the second was waking up and wondering how the crap I got so engrossed in my studies that I forgot about the basics of what I wish to do with my life. Sure I get the blessed comedic effect of saying I did my Masters on Facebook, but what I really want to do is tackle something tangible I can touch.

Studying campus climate, teaching students and helping to run the Positive Event Chain is not enough.

I can reconcile all of this with myself if I think of the Masters Paper as just a pit stop to what I intend to do with my PhD but I'm entrenched! Almost all of the connections I've made and material I've read - any small shred of expertise I've gained beyond Sociology isn't having to do with the digital divide or technology-based community outreach, it's all wrapped around social networking technologies and identity theory. In short I couldn't be happy making a career or PhD out of studying Facebook but if I continue down my current path (starting interviews, doing increasingly intricate and informed specialized studies, teaching classes on the technologies of Social Informatics) that's precisely what I'll end up doing!

It's not over yet, however. I'm going to make time to meet with Abdul Alkalimat this week (or next week if we have to) and just spill it. What he did at the University of Toledo with technology and community outreach needs to be done here. The wealth disparity in this town is greater than it is in Chicago and the amount the University is involved is atrocious. The best Library and Information Science school in the country has an amazing array of resources and talented people - my plan is to jump into that mess, set sights for the local community and see how much difference I can make. Time to get back to doing what I do.

Becoming a Master of Arts

2007-08-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

I know my professional blog has been quiet for a couple of months now - I spent much of the summer working on my porfolio and reading. I've suddenly been thrusted head over heels into my second year of graduate school. I'm teaching two new classes - an introduction to Sociology (soc 100) and Social Perspectives on the Family (soc 273) - but these feel like a natural part of life now, while I'm still in love with teaching I have plenty of confidence I can do it well. No, what scares me more is this whole independent study Masters paper thing. Most of the normal Sociology PhD's here just write a paper that counts for their masters somewhere along their track to the higher degree but because of my transfer I need to finish it ASAP to begin my work in LIS. So I lined up an independent study and flushed out an outline to finish one paper, start two others, read oodles of sources, collect interview and focus group data, contact everyone around campus who has anything to do with what I do, and otherwise lose my mind. It's terrifying.

At this point I have no idea if I've bit off more than I can chew. Being busy out of my mind is a normal state of affairs for me but this time the pressure is ten fold as high because I'm doing something I'm not so sure about and am very new to. I still don't even know who all of my readers are because there are a whole two people directly related to what I do in Sociology.

In many ways I'm excited and enthusiastic - I have faith in my own abilities and motivation and have no fears about my interest in the subject. I know plenty of people who could help me out and have a plethora of resources among students and programs in the University. But at the end of the semester I'm going to be handing a paper to three individuals who've been trained for years in academe to be intensely critical and who have only a few minor connections to my area of study. It's already a battle explaining to older professors the relevance of Facebook, it's going to be an even bigger battle explaining it to professors who aren't interested in technology.

But that's okay. This is what I signed on for when I chose to go to grad school, and dealing with criticism, like it or not, is essential in an academe infiltrated by argument disguised as dialectic. I'm here to learn, I'm as smart and capable as I am, and only know what my experiences have taught me. Here goes nothing...

Real Research, Silly Statistics, and an Enabler

2007-05-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

So I suppose it’s a sign that I’ve managed to get myself knee deep in graduate school: I’m starting to do my own research. It’s funny, despite the fact I teach a class on research methods I’m quickly finding out how little I really know about real research process. Two methods courses and a statistics class notwithstanding none of my experience has been literal real world graduate caliber research. I learn so much by application – I wish I could see how professors do their own research. So as it stands I’m doing a lot of mimicking what books tell me and what I can discern are proper methods. In less classier words, fake it until you [hope to] make it. Thank God I found some help in an unexpected place: Survey Methods instructor Jane Burris.

I’ve begun to gather my own data for the Facebook project, with a formal DMI 1100 student random sampling and IRB’s blessing and all that jazz, and like any good researcher I of course find a couple hundred million questions I want to ask after my survey is released into the wild. I made an ultimate newbie mistake too – turns out the ambiguous category on the form builder labeled “number of responses allowed” doesn’t pertain to individual respondents but how many people can respond to your survey period. Cleared that one up this past week, I’m praying it doesn’t mar my response rate too badly. The UIUC form builder is insufficient to perform real survey functions – it doesn’t support skip logic, use of visual aids, or partial response records. In order to perform research at UIUC we have to use it, though. The 20$ subscription to Survey Monkey for my convenience sample my senior year was leagues better, you’d think the university could afford something superior. I know, I know, it’s probably like one LAS social science IT guy who gets tasked with that and 1800 other things. So make it an assignment in a CS class, problem solved.

Here’s the interesting part to me, though. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this research if I didn’t happen to take a flexible methods course this semester with an amazingly helpful instructor: Jane Burris. Not only is Jane not officially in sociology, but she doesn’t have any formal professorship standing – and she’s the best methods instructor I’ve had to date. Why? She guides the advanced students through whatever research they wish to do. No contrived artificial projects on far away unrelated countries or pretend ethnographies on environments we all know too well – I was told to design my own survey, collect my own data, and work to analyze it for an eventual publication! No other class in Sociology (that I know of) offers that kind of opportunity. Thanks to Jane I’ve been able to not only start the Facebook Project, but start it with a little confidence about my methods.

There are drawbacks though. I never really learned statistics. I mean sure, I can tell you about how to use and interpret a few statistical significance tests or even a little bit about linear or logarithmic regression. But I have absolutely no idea how to employ which statistical tests to my own data. In class we were taught the mechanics of a test, how to interpret the results – but not how and when to use it! I’ve picked up some basics from the crosstabs and Pearon’s Chi-square material I teach in 380, but I want to know when I should isolate specific variables to determine a causal factor. If I’m studying social capital and have all of these substantively defined concepts and conceptualized variables to represent this, how then do I take a statistics test and say something about them? I’m not just talking oh look the median number of friends on Facebook – I’m talking about controlling for race and year in school to identify if gender alone significantly impacts the ways Facebook is used as a supplement to social capital! We’re talking many variables that all intersect that I don’t know how to relate to one another with statistics in meaningful ways. So enough complaining, I just wanted to give examples. I’m hoping I can find a class or an individual who can tell me that Cronbach’s alpha would best illustrate the connections between my matrix of Facebook usage variables to say, perceptions on digital privacy. So that is, designing a plan of analysis for my data. I can coax a computer into doing the thuckethead statistics for me and check with a book to see what the results mean in technical terms.

A happy conclusion? Jane has offered to help me sort through my data this summer. I’m looking forward to seeing what results!

A Salutation to Teaching

2007-03-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

The coming of the Spring semester has brought with it not only an array of opportunities for new studies and research but also an experience of an entirely different kind - teaching. I now teach a section for Sociology 380, research methods, and facilitate an intergroup dialogue session on race and ethnicity. I'm quickly finding that I'm really not as new to this instruction thing than I thought I would be - my students are essentially my peers and really teaching seems to be akin to organization leadership, my old friend. And herein lies a bit of a philosophy I'm discovering. Once you cover the basics of skills and motivation teaching seems to be more about communication, collaboration and most importantly, inspiration. Having taken the classes I'm teaching I find myself in the mind of the students - but with an additional perspective - that of graduate school. Realizing just how important concepts like dialogue and comprehensive knowledge of research methods are has been an integral part of my experience with the graduate school transformation.

So my optimistic tangential mind naturally aspires to introduce positive change into the mesh of academia. As a strong believer in technology as a learning tool I've already introduced web sites into both of my courses. Students seem to love the agenda and resource linking on the 380 site, and we've still yet had only one session for intergroup. Improvement in the realm of technology is just an easy first step. Working with the fabric of the courses is what I'm increasingly interested in. After attending the annual Latino-Latino Studies Program conference a few weekends ago I started sifting through ideas on how to integrate another crucial component of academia that all too often gets overlooked - activism. My methods course specifically presents a spectacular opportunity for students to volunteer around town for their ethnography project. I'd like to collect a list of some of the better places students might volunteer and observe at the same time in the CU area. At the same time if I can manage to figure it out I'd love to let students talk about their community organizations and involvement in a brainstorm session somewhere during the course - I'm sure they have ideas I don't. And if nothing else I'd love for them to apply their critical sociology skills in new ways during their ethnographies - be it in a social group oriented categorical fashion (race, gender, ability, etc...) or from a standpoint of evaluating with theory models (Marxist, Weberian, structural functionalism, etc...). I'm not just concerned with the students learning the mechanics of the methods, but also the thinking that goes behind them. We'll see where this goes, I'm relatively new to the teaching thing and have to first prove my worth. In the words of the great Mario, "Here we go!"

Pheonix Rising

2007-03-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

JAG-wire has been reborn. This blog will now serve as the home to my latest pondering for JAG-wire.net, the professional ensemble of JAG85.