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More facts
Tuesday, 31 Aug 2010, 8:30 PM (permalink).
I've been doing some re-connecting with people I'd lost touch with over the years, and my first step has generally been to point them toward April's Just the Facts post so I wouldn't have to go through all that exposition each time. But those facts are getting a bit outdated, so I figured it's time advance the exposition a bit. 1. I am a student again
This week, I officially ceased being a pathetic, unemployed slacker and became a pathetic, unemployed Information Architect-in-training. I've enrolled in the graduate certificate program in Information Design at the University of Baltimore. I've been secretly fascinated by the field of information architecture since seeing Paul Kahn give a keynote talk on the subject at Hypertext 01. It was also during that conference, at a cafe overlooking the Århus River, that I had a long, pleasant conversation with Stuart Moulthrop and Nancy Kaplan about what was then a fairly new Doctor of Communications Design program they had launched at Baltimore. Geography was always an obstacle to pursuing the matter any further, but I've kept my eye on the program over the years. It is still fairly unique in locating itself squarely at the intersection of the various disciplines that contribute to what I guess we now call UX Design  , rather than simply annexing it to a more traditional field like graphic design, library science, or computer science. In my past positions, I have done a fair amount of work that might be considered IA-ish, but it has all been ad hoc and lacking in formal grounding. Also, having spent most of my adult life in academia in one capacity or another, I am woefully unfamiliar with the professional culture of private design work. I am optimistic that this program will help address both of these shortcomings so that I can re-invent myself professionally. And speaking of professional culture, I am planning on attending the IA Institute's IDEA 2010 conference, which will be taking place in Philadelphia September 30-October 2. I don't know much about the conference, but with folks like Peter Morville, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Liz Danzico on the program, it certainly looks to be interesting, and with it being almost literally in my back yard, it seemed foolish to pass up the opportunity to check it out. 2. The divorce is final
Yeah, not much to say about this one. I guess the paperwork went through not long after the "Just the Facts" post went up. To say that I am still trying to come to terms with it would be an understatement. If anything, I am more confused and less inclined to discuss it publicly than I was four months ago. The one good thing I can say about all this is that, despite the distance, I think I am managing to maintain a strong connection with the kids. They were up here for a couple weeks at the beginning of August, and we had a great time, visiting Philly and hanging out at the shore. I give Sylvia a lot of credit for making sure I remain a presence in their lives, and I think we are both resolved not to let them get stuck in the middle of whatever difficulties or disagreements we may be having with each other.
3. Not much else has changed.
Pretty self explanatory. Still living with my parents, which is fine. Still undergoing treatment for my depression, which I guess is nominally under control (it's hard to tell: since I haven't really had to function consistently like a normal, adult person—consistently at least—these past six months, I still don't really know if I am capable of it). Still uncertain about anything having to do with my long-term future, although this certificate program should keep me occupied for the next nine months or so.
Well, this has probably gone on long enough. I have a busy agenda of dicking around on the Internet to attend to, not to mention homework to put off doing. Good night, The Internet.
File under: Ego, Academe, Black bile.
Tagging the future
Wednesday, 9 Jun 2010, 4:16 PM (permalink).
I am going to Toronto next week for the Hypertext 2010 conference. I attended my first Hypertext conference in 1996, and from 1999-2002, I went every year. A number of factors (work, family, distance, timing, and my own inability to do any sustained critical writing) have prevented me from getting to the last several, but this conference still holds a special place in my heart. I've been to a variety of academic conferences, small and large, and I generally manage to enjoy myself at them (even that infamous midwinter fear festival, the MLA), but the Hypertext conferences have been, hands down, my favorite. The size is manageable, the quality of the work presented is high, the organization typically first-rate (HT01 in Aarhus, Denmark holds the distinction as the single most beautiful conference I've attended), but most importantly, I have always felt strangely at home amid the odd mix of computer scientists and humanists the conference attracts. So I am approaching this conference with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Having been away from it for so long, I wonder if the atmosphere will be the same, and whether I will still feel the same connection to the field as I used to. I am hoping the answer is yes, and if not, there's always the NXNE Music Festival going on in Toronto at the same time. I had hoped to to take part in a pre-conference workshop on the "Rhetorical and Semantic Possibilities of Links," but apparently I was one of only two people who submitted position papers for it and it got cancelled. I was a little bummed about that because that position paper was the first bit of vaguely critical writing I'd done in a very long time and I was actually pretty happy with it. So rather than let it go to waste, I thought I'd put it up here. It's an idea I have been kicking around for a while, and it seemed to fit nicely with the questions raised in workshop's call:
Mark Bernstein has written that the link is "the most important new punctuation mark since the comma." More than that, the link actually conveys meaning. But how do people use links to communicate ideas? This workshop is designed to uncover the semantic value of the link and its potential rhetorical effects. We want to know what has been the cultural, literary, rhetorical, and semantic impact of the link to date, and what future effects can we anticipate and bring about.
(
CFP: HT2010 Workshop. Rhetorical and Semantic Possibilities of Links: Cultural and Literary Applications of Links
)
Anyway, here's what I wrote.
Tags as Future-tense Links
One of my principle interests at the moment is tagging, which was popularized on such social media sites as Flickr and Delicious and has since become ubiquitous not only on websites, but also in PC software. In a wide variety of contexts and applications, user-generated tags are employed as a means of providing ad hoc, organic organization to potentially massive bodies of information. In this, tags are different from, and generally seen as being in opposition to, traditional taxonomies and classification systems. A good deal has been written about the efficacy of tags as a new form of information management (one of the champions of tagging in this regard is David Weinberger, Everything Is Miscellaneous [2007]; for a contrarian view, see Cathy Marshall, "Do Tags Work?" Tekka 4:1 [2009]). I am, however, interested in the role tags play as links. As commonly implemented, a tag usually appears as a link which will, when activated, take a reader to a list of all other items that have been assigned the same tag. That is, tags become part of the navigational structure of the information space they are being used to describe. (In this, tags differ from keywords, which are typically considered metadata and are often visible only to machine functions like search engines.) Tag-links, however, differ from other types of links in that they are open-ended. Rather than pointing to a particular node or executing a defined action, a tag functions as a point of attraction, around which possibly-related material might congregate.
Put in grammatical terms, tagging could be said to add a "future tense" to hypertext linking. The classic reference link operates in the past tense: e.g., we expect a link to a news article or blog posting to point to news or information associated with a fixed point in the past. Other links function in the present tense: e.g., we expect a link to the main page of a news or blog site to show us current information, regardless of when the link itself was created. Tags might be said to operate in both these ways (as finding aids, they help link to information created in the past; in the form of "tag clouds" they can provide a snapshot of the present shape of a given information space), but tags also imply a link to things that don't yet exist, a way of linking prospectively to things that may be created in the future. This future orientation of tags becomes clear when one considers that for every tag, there must be a first time it is used, and since a tag that can only be applied to one unique object or location is essentially pointless (except, perhaps as a joke), every first use of a tag expresses a faith in future uses yet to come.
If hypertext in general can be seen as a response to the challenge of navigating extremely large information spaces, tagging, with its future orientation, could be seen as a recognition of the fact that these information spaces are not only large but ever-growing. By providing a means of linking to the unknown and as-yet-unwritten, tagging represents a significant expansion of the the "grammar" of hypertext. But such an expansion implies new questions about the rhetoric of linking. The conventions and expectations for linking to known quantities are still evolving. How, then, do we reach a consensus on how to link to future content that may or may not ever be created? How is this future function of tagging balanced against the weight of the past? If the first use of a tag is purely future facing, what happens with each subsequent use, as precedent begins to shape the connotative value of the link? Is the rhetoric of future-linking different in a public environment like a social network than it is when tags are being created by and for just a handful or even a single user? How do we handle tags whose meaning is ambiguous, or whose significance changes over time? What happens when tags are used with humorous, satirical, or subversive intentions?
Like so many facets of social media, however, there is much about tagging that remains unsettled. For hypertext studies, I believe tagging raises numerous questions. It is these that I would most like to explore during the workshop.
File under: Academe, Digital culture.
A giant fist is out to crush us
Tuesday, 8 Jun 2010, 3:54 PM (permalink).
Since returning to the Ancestral Lands, I've taken advantage of being in a major metropolitan area to get out and see some good bands. I've been remiss in not chronicling these shows as they've happened, and at this point, I'm probably not going to bother with most of them. But I did have a few things to share about the Thermals show in Philadelphia back on April 15. I had a bit of consternation over deciding to go to this show because Titus Andronicus were also playing in town the same night. Despite being less than satisfied with my previous Titus Andronicus concert experience, I've been very much digging their new album, The Monitor (while being somewhat disappointed with the Thermals' most recent one, Now We Can See), so it was a tough call to make. However, three facts tilted the balance in favor of the Thermals: (a) I'd never seen them before; (b) Atlanta's all-girl quartet The Coathangers, whom I'd also never seen before, were opening for them; and (c) the show was at the First Unitarian Church, and I needed to see first-hand what has inexplicably become Philadelphia's premier indie rock venue. Anyway, I was thoroughly pleased with my choice. In lieu of a real concert review, I'll just post an email I composed on my phone as I sat, sweat-soaked and ears still ringing, on the PATCO train that took me back across the river after the show. FAQ Regarding Tonight's Thermals Show
- Is the basement of the First Unitarian Church as strange a venue for a show as you'd expect a church basement to be?
- Does it nevertheless have a sound system loud enough to feel the kick-drum in my sternum?
- Is it true that there's no alcohol for sale, so everyone there is drinking paper-bag-wrapped beers they bought from the neighboring convenience store?
- Were the Coathangers ferocious and awesome?
- Have I already forgotten the name of the OK-but-unremarkable second band?
- Did the Thermals basically rock the shit out from the first note they played?
- Did they play "Pillar of Salt" and "Here's Your Future," and were those songs fucking awesome?
- Was there a mosh pit?
- Did I participate in the mosh pit?
- Was the mosh pit experience, as usual, a somewhat threatening yet exhilarating descent into a raw, sweaty sea of humanity?
- Did the show allow me to forget, however fleetingly, the utter horribleness of existence?
A. Yes.
File under: Music, Local color.
Just the facts
Sunday, 18 Apr 2010, 5:12 PM (permalink).
Six weeks ago, I made cryptic allusions to "stuff" and vague promises of an explanation. Today I am going to try to make good on that promise. I am going to try to keep this limited to basic facts because there is still much to this "stuff" that is painful, that I feel confused about, or that I just don't feel comfortable writing about in public. Still, I think it is important to get these few facts out to clarify some things for friends and other interested parties who may be puzzled about my behavior, especially in the last 3 months or so. In addition, until I can these things out into the open, I think I am going to have a hard time moving forward with many things in my life, including this blog (which I do have hopes of returning to at least it's former level of irregular activity). So, then: 1. I suffer from chronic depression
I was diagnosed with depression about 5½ years ago, when I was in the midst of a severe depressive episode brought on by various stressors, but it seems likely in retrospect that my history of depression goes back considerably further than that. With the help of my family, therapy, and medication, I was able to survive that particular episode and work myself back to something approaching normal functioning, but it has been and remains a struggle. Until now, outside of a very small circle of friends, I have kept my depression a secret, or at least not acknowledged it publicly. I did this in part because it seemed like a private matter and in part because I feared the public stigma attached to mental illness (a stigma that also prevented me from recognizing my own depression and seeking treatment until it was very nearly too late). In retrospect, I think that secrecy was a mistake. I have intentions of being more open about my depression in general and about writing about it on this blog in particular. At the very least, it will save me the effort of having to pretend I am not depressed (an effort that has been pretty draining for me in the past), and I have hopes that writing about my depression in public will help me think through and come to grips with how I deal with it in my day-to-day life. 2. I am getting divorced
This follows more or less directly from the fact of my depression, which has put tremendous strain on my marriage over the years. My feelings about this divorce are a chaotic tangle of guilt, sadness, anger, frustration and flat-out incomprehension. I am not even remotely ready to discuss these publicly, and given that there are other people involved, I'm not sure that I'll ever be inclined to reveal much about it here. I will say that the logistical details of the separation have been handled amicably, and that this is nevertheless the most painful thing I have ever had to deal with. As my therapists have pointed out, a divorce can be every bit as traumatic as a death, with the added complication of providing none of the closure.
3. I have moved back to New Jersey
Once the decision to divorce was made, there was essentially nothing to keep me in Kentucky. My work and my depression were locked in a vicious circle (frustration with work fueled my depression which then interfered with my work, leaving me even more frustrated...), and our tiny university-centered community did not seem to offer any alternatives for taking my life in a new direction. Also, inasmuch as my social circle there was inextricably tied up with the family life I was exiting, I had little available to me as a support system, which is pretty much essential for any depressive, and which I was certain I would need to rely on heavily as I worked through the additional trauma of the divorce.
So back in February, I resigned from my job, packed up a U-haul, and transported myself to my parents' house in South Jersey (yes, I am an unemployed, 40-something Internet nerd living with his parents. At least I am living in an attic and not the basement). From here, I am trying to make some sense of what has happened and pick up the pieces of my life. Again, I am nowhere near achieving that, but I have managed to make some positive steps, including resuming active treatment for my depression, resuming some activities I have found enjoyable in the past, and taking some very preliminary steps toward resuming some kind of professional life. I still have plenty of bad days, and almost everything is up in the air right now, but I am safe and I have support, and maybe that's as good a starting point as anyone can ask for.
The worst thing about moving away has been being separated from my children. Cellphones and Skype have helped bridge that gap somewhat, and they flew up to visit during their spring break in March. In a couple weeks, I will drive down to Kentucky and visit with them as well. Such cobbled-together interactions will have to suffice for the time being. Perhaps my biggest regret in all of this is the impact it is having on their lives, although to be honest, they have displayed more resilience and adaptability in handling all the changes we have thrown at them than I have.
And that brings us just about up to date. Thank you, The Internet, for listening. It feels good to get all this off my chest. Hopefully, it will free me up to write some less self-pitying drivel in the near future.
File under: Ego, Black bile.
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