Latest Thinking
My current mind waves related to JAG-wire. Find all of them at JAG-wire.blogspot.com.
Intentionally Empathic
Updated 10.05.2009
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...
Previous Posts
- Musings with Tom Fairbank (what drives passionate people?)
- A Plan for Mentoring in Community Informatics: Cohorts
- Meandering Thoughts (Facebook was easy)
- Connectors, Revisited (Malcolm Gladwell style)
- Bloglets (Babies in the Doc Study, Urban Prairie Archeology, My Digital Literacy)
- You are Missed...
- Shotgun Blast (assertiveness, TV, introversion and ICT's, value in creation, election information)
- Excitement Refresh (Facebook ruins romance)
- Facebook Friends, False Connections and Social Norms
Recent Creations
I toss up the footprints of my most recent activities here for easy tracking.
Much Amuck on the World-Wide-Wibley
I've actually been spending a lot of time on websites for community informatics and personal projects. See some of the latest below:
- The Sao Tome Map Project (GIS research!)
- Prickly Pear Writing Contest (high school writing contest for my sister)
- Los Sabrosos Salsa (salsa dancing in Madison)
- Duke and the Duck (animation production!)
- The Joseph Center (homeless services center)
- Community Informatics Initiative [concept designs]
- Community Informatics Multimedia Archive [concept designs]
- Youth Community Informatics
- Prairienet2 (demo and working concept)
- Community Informatics Club (active!)
- Vibes (under construction)
- JAG85.com Redux (coming)
Facing the Books
For the latest updates on the Facebook Project you should probably go visit the site. I will say that I had the privilege of giving a presentation on Facebook and ubiquitous learning at the HASTAC conference at UIUC this past spring. You can see the PowerPoint or better yet read the paper (starts on page 7). I've also added a section to the wiki listing most of the researchers I've come in contact with that have something to do with Facebook. This is a great place to link up with fellow researchers. In the same vein, Jenny Ryan now has a Webnographers wiki, dedicated to organizating the literature, journals, academic programs, people and other online resources that provide, in effect, a cyberanthropologist's toolkit. This is helpful for anyone interested in digital ethnography.
Inside of Me Lurks an Artist...
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A Collaborative Drawing, part II!
The second in a series of collaborative art pieces planned, assembled, modified and otherwise created in my apartment. Essentially we took a large sheet of bristol board and laid it out as a canvas, inviting every visitor to leave their mark in the form of a drawing or alteration to someone else's work. It was much the same as the first one except this time we expanded to add color and new mediums (pencil, pen, marker, crayon). The result is hanging on our wall!
A Wallflower
I've been doing these on my walls for years, but this one will get to stay for a while. Still unfinished, we will see the flower bloom... probably around the next time I'm dating someone. We dream in images...
Legos in Graduate School
'Nuff said, coming soon.
