Author: Margaret

Review of The Inner History of Devices

Post author By Margaret
Post date December 8, 2011

The Inner History of Devices by [sic] Sherry Turkle

This volume is edited and with an introduction by Sherry Turkle, and each chapter is written by someone else, so the “by” in the bibliographic data should really read “ed.”. Anyway.

This work examines people’s personal relationships with technology through three formats: memoir, ethnography, and case report. In each case, the point is to understand how the technology either builds or elides a sense of self. Not surprisingly, results show that participative environments help people to build a sense of self, though this is frequently pathological. In other cases, the technology masks people’s humanity, usually with deleterious effects; the chapters on addiction and disease are the most striking examples of this. In these cases, a life and death dependence on technology such as in the case of dialysis can quickly lead to despair or feeling like a cyborg. It seems to me that a frequent criticism of Sherry Turkle is that she tends to see the pathological in people’s relationships with technology. My personal view on the matter is that she might be right, though of course I don’t change my own behavior to account for it. But even when new social or learning spaces are created as technology advances, we have to recognize their limits. The chapter “Cyberplaces” by Kimberlyn Leary had the example that most resonated with me. Melissa has just discovered that her “knight” in a medieval online RPG is really a 15 year old boy. He insists nothing has changed about their relationship. Melissa feels differently.

Most clinicians would not fault Melissa’s comment for showing a lack of imagination but would find it a healthy adaptive response. She has come to an important realization, absent in much of the over-enthusiastic literature on cyberspace: the computer makes multiple selves possible–but only to a point. Melissa can live on the surface, but at a critical moment, the need for depth returns. (pp. 89-90)

I am sure we could all name a similar “critical moment” in our own lives.

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Writing

Collection analytics (It’s not what you think)

Post author By Margaret
Post date December 5, 2011

I am in the middle of what my brain thinks is pure brilliance, though it reveals to me that my recollection of Descartes is shakier than I’d believed. But this sort of writing takes time to mature. There is hardly anything worse than half-baked philosophy, or at least reading it while sober.

My reading of late has been fast and furious, because I set myself the task of reading 100 books in 2011. I am up to about 90. One of the things I hope to write about more is the collection of ideas just for the sake of collecting them. 100 is clearly an arbitrary number, particularly since if I have my way I will be much of the way through A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is about 5000 pages long–so far. And yet the urge drives me forward. I want to do it just to say I did it. Well, why do people climb Mount Everest anyway?

I am also creating a database of all my clothes. This is part of the same project (I think) that talks about collecting ideas just for the sake of it. Clothes are the same way. I am “doing analytics” as I like to say on my clothes to prove to myself that a wardrobe of which 25$ is t-shirts in middling condition clearly needs no more t-shirts added. Why conferences thought they were doing me a favor by providing t-shirts instead of tote bags I have no idea. I did promise to share my template with all of you, but I have to figure out how to do it.

So there you have it. The most mundane take possible on the research and writing that’s been driving me along for awhile now. More later, I promise.

Internet Libraries

Pages are now available on Google+

Post author By Margaret
Post date November 8, 2011

You’ll have noticed that all recent library conferences have had presentations on “Using Google+ in the Library” or similar, but they all were missing something. You could use Google+ as a librarian, but not as a library. As of yesterday, that’s changed.

I found some good step-by-step instructions here on how to make a page, or you can follow along on Google+ official help. I am still unclear on the advantages to a Local Page vs. a Company, Institution or Organization page. This seems to me very much like the old Facebook page vs. place argument. If they are exactly the same thing and you only have one location maybe you should make a Local Page rather than a non-profit or organization page. I made the decision to make an organization page, which hopefully wasn’t the wrong decision. (I actually did make a place page as well, just in case, but didn’t do anything with it yet). Facebook eventually made it possible to have both at the same time, so this might be coming soon.

There also is no info that I could find on how to add additional administrators, though I assume this is coming soon. I will add it to the library’s social media repertoire slowly, since not all our librarians are on Google+ anyway yet. We don’t get many reference questions over social media yet, but we do get a few and have a librarian assigned to monitor social media each day. I could see scenarios in the future where we had hangout office hours for distance or commuter students or really anyone who wanted to do a hangout, since that’s so easy in this platform. But that will have to wait until we get more people on board, and figure out if any of those constituents are even using Google+.

Update: Just a few pointers–this works the same way as Facebook, in which you have to have a personal account to create a page. But like Facebook, your personal page is completely separate. You either use Google+ as yourself, or the organization page. You also cannot follow anyone until they follow you, unlike Google+ for individuals.