Gay marriage has never been a top priority to me. In addition to the fact that I'm perpetually single, I also happen to believe that the LGBT community should be working to assure that men and women are treated equally under the law regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, or perceived gender identity. Marriage could then follow logically, but never seemed to me a necessary first step. But today, I must admit, I'm very proud to be queer in California and to feel that for the first time, the State Supreme Court declared me equal under the law and realized that this was an issue of equal protection and nothing less. That is a beautiful thing.
Even more beautiful are the lives that changed today. I've been reading stories and looking at pictures and I can't help but cry to see all of the gay and lesbian couples, with their parents and siblings and children watching, who have cemented their relationships with the full sanction of the state today. The images in the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle are truly inspiring.
I must say, I wish I saw more women in tuxes, or any men in dresses. At least in these two major media outlets, the images are mostly of good looking matched couples in suits or white wedding dresses. I do love these guys' outfits. The relatively palatable imagery is a deliberate campaign to avoid providing fodder for the hatred of the other side, as reported here in the LA Times. Of course, this just makes the conventional imagery even more odious to me. I'd much rather see people also getting married in plaid jackets or punk rock gear or leather and drag queens in bridal gown glory and everything else that makes the queer community beautiful and diverse and distinct. In the months between now and November (and hopefully long after) I hope people will get the chance to have all the beautiful, outrageous, queer weddings that they want. And for now, matching suits or bridal gowns are pretty beautiful, too.
Oh, and in closing, one of the many things that made me cry today was this lovely blog post by (heterosexual) sci-fi writer John Scalzi, who happens to share his anniversary with this historic day. This is truly how to be a friend and ally.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Time to Play
Finding myself with some free time for the first time in a very long time, I'm feeling a strange compulsion to play games. Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination a gamer. I don't play many video games (although I do have a Nintendo DS), computer games, or board games, but many of my closest friends do all of these things. I have friends who are huge fans of Settlers of Catan. When Bioshock and Portal came out, I heard everything about them even though I've never played either. I even have friends who play a regular D&D game, but I'm not one of them. I've lost many friends to World of Warcraft. I'm a big fan of Apples to Apples at parties, but in general I am at best a casual gamer who will occasionally play a game of Babble or other solitary games.
However, gaming has come up in my life a lot recently. Not just because my brilliant best friend studies and designs games, although that doesn't hurt. He'll be running around New York as part of the Come Out and Play festival this weekend. I also, completely randomly, found myself playing dice with friends outside of a coffeehouse yesterday.
Finding myself craving some gaming recently, I downloaded the new Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One. I found the whole thing highly amusing, though overpriced for its length. The situations are hilarious and I found the aesthetic entertaining. The turn-based action was a bit annoying, but overall the game itself was fun and made me laugh. I enjoyed it quite a bit, except that it was over too quickly. I will probably play the next episode, but I hope it's cheaper.
I've said for a year and a half that once I finished my dissertation I could get a Wii, and now that I've filed, I'm hoping that my parents will give it to me as a graduation gift, but considering that there still aren't any on store shelves, I'm not particularly optimistic that my parents will come through.
In other gaming news, I watched Jane McGonigal's talk, "Saving the World Through Game Design" from the 2008 New Yorker Conference on their website. It's a fairly familiar but quite interesting and simple explanation of what's going on in gaming and how it helps us see and deal with our lives differently. Prophboy sent me this link about how GTA IV changes the way players experience New York City. And at GigaOm, Nabeel Hyatt of Conduit Labs tries to define social gaming by distinguishing between synchronous and asynchronus games.
None of these things, however, has satisfied my craving for gaming. So I ask the internet, what games should I be playing? What am I missing out on? Should I try to organize a game night with my friends to play board and card games? Invest in a console? Try to convince my Wii and XBox-owning friends to invite me over to play? Or just read some more gaming news and theory?
However, gaming has come up in my life a lot recently. Not just because my brilliant best friend studies and designs games, although that doesn't hurt. He'll be running around New York as part of the Come Out and Play festival this weekend. I also, completely randomly, found myself playing dice with friends outside of a coffeehouse yesterday.
Finding myself craving some gaming recently, I downloaded the new Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One. I found the whole thing highly amusing, though overpriced for its length. The situations are hilarious and I found the aesthetic entertaining. The turn-based action was a bit annoying, but overall the game itself was fun and made me laugh. I enjoyed it quite a bit, except that it was over too quickly. I will probably play the next episode, but I hope it's cheaper.
I've said for a year and a half that once I finished my dissertation I could get a Wii, and now that I've filed, I'm hoping that my parents will give it to me as a graduation gift, but considering that there still aren't any on store shelves, I'm not particularly optimistic that my parents will come through.
In other gaming news, I watched Jane McGonigal's talk, "Saving the World Through Game Design" from the 2008 New Yorker Conference on their website. It's a fairly familiar but quite interesting and simple explanation of what's going on in gaming and how it helps us see and deal with our lives differently. Prophboy sent me this link about how GTA IV changes the way players experience New York City. And at GigaOm, Nabeel Hyatt of Conduit Labs tries to define social gaming by distinguishing between synchronous and asynchronus games.
None of these things, however, has satisfied my craving for gaming. So I ask the internet, what games should I be playing? What am I missing out on? Should I try to organize a game night with my friends to play board and card games? Invest in a console? Try to convince my Wii and XBox-owning friends to invite me over to play? Or just read some more gaming news and theory?
Stealing the Spotlight
Spotlight Stealerz. Highways Performance Space. 5/31/08.
D'Lo, Adelina Anthony, and Alison M. De La Cruz teamed up for this hilarious show at Highways, and while each (well, I can attest to D'Lo and Adelina) are amazing solo performers, they also make a wonderful team. The evening was a collection of sketches and skits, and while some scenes missed the mark or were overly serious for an evening of comedy, altogether they put on a great show.
I was amazed by each artist's work developing characters; they ranged from butch to femme to male to female to young to old to skunk and each character was clearly established through costume and mannerism as well as script. Each artist was brave in exploring both their own established identity positions and crossing the boundaries to perform outside their own identities. While Adelina as a 20-year-old boy was impressive, D'Lo in drag as a femme bank cashier was truly astonishing both because of how well it was done and how unexpected it was.
The throughline of the piece, which I found quite compelling, featured De La Cruz as a baby butch (recently converted from femme) exploring butch identity through conversation with an elderly butch/femme couple in a nursing home. Several of the other characters fit into this storyline, though that only became clear in retrospect. The establishment of this plot was extremely cleverly arranged, but I would have liked to see even more of these characters, and perhaps have seen them established earlier. I would have loved to see what the butch character (Frankie) was like as a femme (rather than being told several times) and what Frankie was like on dates. Perhaps we even could have seen the elderly couple when they were young. Several of the issues discussed between these three characters were fascinating and could have been fleshed out more, but this is only a minor consideration.
Overall, the evening was hilarious and showcased some very talented artists who have great chemistry together. I hope I get to see these three work together again soon. In the meantime, I've marked my calendar to see D'Lo in Ramble-Ations: A One D'Lo Show at Highways June 27-28.
D'Lo, Adelina Anthony, and Alison M. De La Cruz teamed up for this hilarious show at Highways, and while each (well, I can attest to D'Lo and Adelina) are amazing solo performers, they also make a wonderful team. The evening was a collection of sketches and skits, and while some scenes missed the mark or were overly serious for an evening of comedy, altogether they put on a great show.
I was amazed by each artist's work developing characters; they ranged from butch to femme to male to female to young to old to skunk and each character was clearly established through costume and mannerism as well as script. Each artist was brave in exploring both their own established identity positions and crossing the boundaries to perform outside their own identities. While Adelina as a 20-year-old boy was impressive, D'Lo in drag as a femme bank cashier was truly astonishing both because of how well it was done and how unexpected it was.
The throughline of the piece, which I found quite compelling, featured De La Cruz as a baby butch (recently converted from femme) exploring butch identity through conversation with an elderly butch/femme couple in a nursing home. Several of the other characters fit into this storyline, though that only became clear in retrospect. The establishment of this plot was extremely cleverly arranged, but I would have liked to see even more of these characters, and perhaps have seen them established earlier. I would have loved to see what the butch character (Frankie) was like as a femme (rather than being told several times) and what Frankie was like on dates. Perhaps we even could have seen the elderly couple when they were young. Several of the issues discussed between these three characters were fascinating and could have been fleshed out more, but this is only a minor consideration.
Overall, the evening was hilarious and showcased some very talented artists who have great chemistry together. I hope I get to see these three work together again soon. In the meantime, I've marked my calendar to see D'Lo in Ramble-Ations: A One D'Lo Show at Highways June 27-28.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
How do you choose internet talent?
Another super geeky post. At least it's not ranting about the failures of MLA citation formats. Because I could go on for quite a while about that right now.
So there's this video podcast called Mahalo Daily. It used to be hosted by Veronica Belmont, and she was fabulous. She was so fabulous, that I watched even though the vast majority of the episodes were about things I didn't care about. They do 5 minute daily segments about businesses and events and activities, mostly based here in LA, and while I was totally amused when she visited a cupcake shop or flew a plane, they weren't things I would normally have chosen to watch if they didn't involve such an interesting, smart, cool host. The best episodes were when her geekier side came out, like when she visited the Star Trek set. But Veronica left to host Tekzilla instead. I think it's super awesome that she wanted a geekier, more tech-heavy show, but what will Mahalo be without her?
I would have automatically stopped watching, since the subject doesn't particularly interest me, except for the fact that the one already announced cohost is Lon Harris. He's smart and funny and I know this from personal experience because I went to high school with him (he was a couple of years ahead of me, but still, I feel like if someone I know and more or less liked is doing something cool, I should watch it).
Now, they are trying to replace Veronica, and the way they are doing that I find fascinating. They chose Lon from inside their ranks - he was apparently already working at Mahalo, they asked him to do a couple of episodes while Veronica was still there, he did them well, so he gets more airtime. This makes sense. But they don't want Lon to host alone. They may want more variety, or it may be because they think a pretty girl will drive more internet traffic, or they may just be trying to recreate the fabulousness that is Veronica's on camera personality. So they're doing a reality-TV-style competition to choose Lon's cohost.
They're down to 6 finalists, and you should totally watch their videos and vote here.
There are some great choices and I'm sure any of them would be excellent hosts. Lon does a great rundown of each contestant's strengths on his blog. And for another female voice (besides mine, not Lon's), TheFemGeek offers her opinions.
Personally, I think both Sarah and Leah had a great blend of professionalism and quirky/geeky feel. Personally, I voted for Leah, but Sarah really has the tech cred. Her blog is @w00d's nerdtainment, which is fabulously geeky.
Andrea is really cute, but doesn't strike me as geeky as I'd like her to be. I felt like she was flirting more than hosting.
Part of me really would like to see Kristina win because of her fabulous hair and the geekiness of choosing a sound guy for her interview, but something felt awkward about her segment. She has the least experience, and it's possible that with a little practice she could be great.
Michelle has an edge of toughness that I really like (plus actual web design experience!), but in the end she didn't stand out for me.
Nadine looked great, but I don't think I learned anything or cared much about her segment. I may not be the right audience for cage fighting. She's very natural on camera, though.
So that's my opinion on the contestants, but I also want to weigh in on the overall format of this selection process. The reality TV parody bits are great, but I really want to know more about the contestants. I need to know their geek street cred. I want to know how smart they really are, not just whether they look good on camera. I want to get more of a sense of them as people. I want to see them interact with Lon more.
Especially in the first round, it felt like the judges were selecting contestants entirely based on looks and I'm really not OK with that. And why couldn't they have a female judge? I seriously hated the judges. I understand why looks are a factor (although I'm not saying that's ok), but please, ask them some questions about themselves and consider some qualifications other than looking pretty.
The best demonstations of contestants' personalities are the post-audition interviews, but one of the finalists doesn't have one, one doesn't have sound, and one of them is much longer and with Lon whereas the other three are shorter and with a different guy, so it's not exactly a balanced representation.
So, what I've learned from this process is that on the internet, men have all the power and are probably the target audience as well. And men can succeed based on talent and skill and a great sense of humor, but women have to have looks in addition to skills (though humor isn't as essential). Life lessons in a microcosm.
So there's this video podcast called Mahalo Daily. It used to be hosted by Veronica Belmont, and she was fabulous. She was so fabulous, that I watched even though the vast majority of the episodes were about things I didn't care about. They do 5 minute daily segments about businesses and events and activities, mostly based here in LA, and while I was totally amused when she visited a cupcake shop or flew a plane, they weren't things I would normally have chosen to watch if they didn't involve such an interesting, smart, cool host. The best episodes were when her geekier side came out, like when she visited the Star Trek set. But Veronica left to host Tekzilla instead. I think it's super awesome that she wanted a geekier, more tech-heavy show, but what will Mahalo be without her?
I would have automatically stopped watching, since the subject doesn't particularly interest me, except for the fact that the one already announced cohost is Lon Harris. He's smart and funny and I know this from personal experience because I went to high school with him (he was a couple of years ahead of me, but still, I feel like if someone I know and more or less liked is doing something cool, I should watch it).
Now, they are trying to replace Veronica, and the way they are doing that I find fascinating. They chose Lon from inside their ranks - he was apparently already working at Mahalo, they asked him to do a couple of episodes while Veronica was still there, he did them well, so he gets more airtime. This makes sense. But they don't want Lon to host alone. They may want more variety, or it may be because they think a pretty girl will drive more internet traffic, or they may just be trying to recreate the fabulousness that is Veronica's on camera personality. So they're doing a reality-TV-style competition to choose Lon's cohost.
They're down to 6 finalists, and you should totally watch their videos and vote here.
There are some great choices and I'm sure any of them would be excellent hosts. Lon does a great rundown of each contestant's strengths on his blog. And for another female voice (besides mine, not Lon's), TheFemGeek offers her opinions.
Personally, I think both Sarah and Leah had a great blend of professionalism and quirky/geeky feel. Personally, I voted for Leah, but Sarah really has the tech cred. Her blog is @w00d's nerdtainment, which is fabulously geeky.
Andrea is really cute, but doesn't strike me as geeky as I'd like her to be. I felt like she was flirting more than hosting.
Part of me really would like to see Kristina win because of her fabulous hair and the geekiness of choosing a sound guy for her interview, but something felt awkward about her segment. She has the least experience, and it's possible that with a little practice she could be great.
Michelle has an edge of toughness that I really like (plus actual web design experience!), but in the end she didn't stand out for me.
Nadine looked great, but I don't think I learned anything or cared much about her segment. I may not be the right audience for cage fighting. She's very natural on camera, though.
So that's my opinion on the contestants, but I also want to weigh in on the overall format of this selection process. The reality TV parody bits are great, but I really want to know more about the contestants. I need to know their geek street cred. I want to know how smart they really are, not just whether they look good on camera. I want to get more of a sense of them as people. I want to see them interact with Lon more.
Especially in the first round, it felt like the judges were selecting contestants entirely based on looks and I'm really not OK with that. And why couldn't they have a female judge? I seriously hated the judges. I understand why looks are a factor (although I'm not saying that's ok), but please, ask them some questions about themselves and consider some qualifications other than looking pretty.
The best demonstations of contestants' personalities are the post-audition interviews, but one of the finalists doesn't have one, one doesn't have sound, and one of them is much longer and with Lon whereas the other three are shorter and with a different guy, so it's not exactly a balanced representation.
So, what I've learned from this process is that on the internet, men have all the power and are probably the target audience as well. And men can succeed based on talent and skill and a great sense of humor, but women have to have looks in addition to skills (though humor isn't as essential). Life lessons in a microcosm.
Monday, May 19, 2008
I'm a sucker for booklists
From Thinking By Writing:
The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - hard to carry around, but hopefully once the diss is done!
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - I actually dropped a college class because I couldn't handle The Canturbury Tales at 8am
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - I definitely read this in high school, but I can't quite remember whether or not it was required. It wasn't in an English class.
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
According to this list, I haven't read anything pre-20th century that wasn't written by Jane Austen, which is a little worrisome. Clearly, I'm a sci-fi fan, and yet there are some major sci-fi books on this list that I haven't managed to read. Cryptonomicon, Doctor Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Anansi Boys are all on my bookshelf taunting me.
The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - hard to carry around, but hopefully once the diss is done!
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - I actually dropped a college class because I couldn't handle The Canturbury Tales at 8am
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - I definitely read this in high school, but I can't quite remember whether or not it was required. It wasn't in an English class.
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
According to this list, I haven't read anything pre-20th century that wasn't written by Jane Austen, which is a little worrisome. Clearly, I'm a sci-fi fan, and yet there are some major sci-fi books on this list that I haven't managed to read. Cryptonomicon, Doctor Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Anansi Boys are all on my bookshelf taunting me.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
How I Geek
I just joined Twitter. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but I did it in order to play the game prophboy is working on. This social networking/messaging site has been uberpopular for the last year in geeky/tech-savvy/silicon valley social circles. Which clearly does not include me.
I am not an early adopter. It takes a lot to convince me to let a new technology into my life. I seriously consider if there's a good reason why I absolutely need a new gadget or if it will just be a distraction. I always doubt that there's really any advantage to joining a particular social network. It is only when information that I can't get any other way seems useful, advantageous, or indispensible to my life that I turn to technology to augment my existence. Even then, I am reluctant to spend money on new devices (I'm a grad student, I'm broke!). My TiVo and my Nintendo DS are both hand-me-downs and I only got an iPod when I convinced my parents to give me one for Christmas this year.
Of course, once I finally accept a new technology, I love it and become easily addicted/dependent (less so with social networking software). I'm seriously in love with podcasts on my iPod. I've basically used the iPod to program my own radio station, which I play in the background when I'm driving or walking somewhere or waiting in lines or other times that would otherwise be mental downtime. I mostly listen to NPR and several tech podcasts (Buzz Out Loud from CNet is my favorite). I love the fact that I can be more intellectually engaged and listen to social and cultural commentary at times that would otherwise be wasted. My original assessment that this doesn't exactly change my life holds true, but I love and appreciate it nonetheless.
The fact that I have chosen to listen to several technology and scifi podcasts reflects my really strange relationship to technology. I don't have or even necessarily understand most of the technology discussed in some of these podcasts, but I like that I know little details of technology culture and I always want to learn more. I find myself reading and watching a lot of science fiction when I have the downtime to read for fun (rare these days as I frantically work on my dissertation). I'm fascinated by the intersection of technology and gender/identity theory and I frequently complain when tech commentators are all guys. I tend to listen mostly to the fabulous women out there talking about tech and I'd love to know more. I pay attention to Annalee Newitz, Veronica Belmont, Molly Wood, and violet blue and I check in on Xeni Jardin when I can. I read most of what Charlie Anders posts on io9. Who else am I missing?
Part of me wishes I had tended more this way academically - I like talking to the people I know who study performance and technology, but only some of the work out there about it speaks to me. I think there tend to be people who know things about performance, people who know things about gender/sexuality, and people who know things about technology and they aren't really talking to each other very well.
So, basically, I have no geek street cred. I can't design or program anything and I'm not in any way obsessed with gadgets or code. I whine about the relative scarcity of women and feminism in geek culture, but I don't know enough to help remedy it. But there's something in me that leans that way and wants to follow the conversations about science and technology culture even if I'm not exactly a participant.
I am not an early adopter. It takes a lot to convince me to let a new technology into my life. I seriously consider if there's a good reason why I absolutely need a new gadget or if it will just be a distraction. I always doubt that there's really any advantage to joining a particular social network. It is only when information that I can't get any other way seems useful, advantageous, or indispensible to my life that I turn to technology to augment my existence. Even then, I am reluctant to spend money on new devices (I'm a grad student, I'm broke!). My TiVo and my Nintendo DS are both hand-me-downs and I only got an iPod when I convinced my parents to give me one for Christmas this year.
Of course, once I finally accept a new technology, I love it and become easily addicted/dependent (less so with social networking software). I'm seriously in love with podcasts on my iPod. I've basically used the iPod to program my own radio station, which I play in the background when I'm driving or walking somewhere or waiting in lines or other times that would otherwise be mental downtime. I mostly listen to NPR and several tech podcasts (Buzz Out Loud from CNet is my favorite). I love the fact that I can be more intellectually engaged and listen to social and cultural commentary at times that would otherwise be wasted. My original assessment that this doesn't exactly change my life holds true, but I love and appreciate it nonetheless.
The fact that I have chosen to listen to several technology and scifi podcasts reflects my really strange relationship to technology. I don't have or even necessarily understand most of the technology discussed in some of these podcasts, but I like that I know little details of technology culture and I always want to learn more. I find myself reading and watching a lot of science fiction when I have the downtime to read for fun (rare these days as I frantically work on my dissertation). I'm fascinated by the intersection of technology and gender/identity theory and I frequently complain when tech commentators are all guys. I tend to listen mostly to the fabulous women out there talking about tech and I'd love to know more. I pay attention to Annalee Newitz, Veronica Belmont, Molly Wood, and violet blue and I check in on Xeni Jardin when I can. I read most of what Charlie Anders posts on io9. Who else am I missing?
Part of me wishes I had tended more this way academically - I like talking to the people I know who study performance and technology, but only some of the work out there about it speaks to me. I think there tend to be people who know things about performance, people who know things about gender/sexuality, and people who know things about technology and they aren't really talking to each other very well.
So, basically, I have no geek street cred. I can't design or program anything and I'm not in any way obsessed with gadgets or code. I whine about the relative scarcity of women and feminism in geek culture, but I don't know enough to help remedy it. But there's something in me that leans that way and wants to follow the conversations about science and technology culture even if I'm not exactly a participant.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Sci Fi Theater
I've queried the lack of Science Fiction in theater before, but this Guardian blog post bemoaning the lack of SciFi theater was picked up by sci-fi blog io9, leading to two dramatically different conversations about the place of science fiction in theater.
The Guardian post inspired several theater fans to list some of their favorite and most notable science fiction theater pieces. The commenters are of course right that the term "robot" was actually coined in a theater piece and there are notable ways that theater does do science fiction. While there have been theatrical adaptations of several good scifi/fantasy books (The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials; I remember seeing a clunky performance of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles when I was in high school) You see science fiction done more often in small theaters and in small ways. Theater does well when it exploits campy and b-movie aspects of science fiction, such as Little Shop of Horrors or Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens or when it offers a visions of potential futures, such as Sarah Kane's Cleansed. Of course, there are other exceptions, like Heddatron, and I must say that the Siti Company's War of the Worlds is one of the most impressive things I have seen in a long time.
On io9, the sci-fi fans for the most part accept the premise that sci-fi and theater aren't necessarily suited for each other. Some commenters seem to think that theater itself is dated and not a viable medium for talking about the future. Some ponder the technical constraints of the live theatrical event. It's true that the aesthetics and relationship to technology are inherently different in theater than they are in film or books or comics. But that can be as productive and inspiring as it can be challenging, especially when done well. The suspension of disbelief in theater is different than in other media and the engagement of the imagination is done differently when you are confronted with live bodies in front of you. Theater can make use of those challenges, but we have a strong tradition of "realism" in the theater - of trying to talk about the way things are rather than what could or should happen. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it tends to lead to expressions other than those that would be classified as science fiction.
So, after reading these two different sets of responses to the relationship between theater and science fiction, I'm actually much more encouraged and enthusiastic about science fiction theater. There's some good stuff out there, and there's a lot of potential for more good science fiction theater. I'll just have to keep my eyes open and go to these shows when I have the opportunity. I'd love to see more cyberpunk and steampunk aesthetics onstage. So, have you seen any good science fiction theater? What scifi lends itself to the stage and what doesn't? Or if it doesn't work, why is that?
The Guardian post inspired several theater fans to list some of their favorite and most notable science fiction theater pieces. The commenters are of course right that the term "robot" was actually coined in a theater piece and there are notable ways that theater does do science fiction. While there have been theatrical adaptations of several good scifi/fantasy books (The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials; I remember seeing a clunky performance of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles when I was in high school) You see science fiction done more often in small theaters and in small ways. Theater does well when it exploits campy and b-movie aspects of science fiction, such as Little Shop of Horrors or Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens or when it offers a visions of potential futures, such as Sarah Kane's Cleansed. Of course, there are other exceptions, like Heddatron, and I must say that the Siti Company's War of the Worlds is one of the most impressive things I have seen in a long time.
On io9, the sci-fi fans for the most part accept the premise that sci-fi and theater aren't necessarily suited for each other. Some commenters seem to think that theater itself is dated and not a viable medium for talking about the future. Some ponder the technical constraints of the live theatrical event. It's true that the aesthetics and relationship to technology are inherently different in theater than they are in film or books or comics. But that can be as productive and inspiring as it can be challenging, especially when done well. The suspension of disbelief in theater is different than in other media and the engagement of the imagination is done differently when you are confronted with live bodies in front of you. Theater can make use of those challenges, but we have a strong tradition of "realism" in the theater - of trying to talk about the way things are rather than what could or should happen. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it tends to lead to expressions other than those that would be classified as science fiction.
So, after reading these two different sets of responses to the relationship between theater and science fiction, I'm actually much more encouraged and enthusiastic about science fiction theater. There's some good stuff out there, and there's a lot of potential for more good science fiction theater. I'll just have to keep my eyes open and go to these shows when I have the opportunity. I'd love to see more cyberpunk and steampunk aesthetics onstage. So, have you seen any good science fiction theater? What scifi lends itself to the stage and what doesn't? Or if it doesn't work, why is that?
Friday, March 21, 2008
The future and the academy
This article is fascinating. Prophboy send me the link, and I'm intriegued and terrified. There are, of course, some inherent flaws to the article, but its argument about the possible impending doom of the entire educational system due to technology may or may not be accurate.
It's interesting to think about academia, which still feels quite often like a holdover from the 13th century actually being challenged and changing due to technology. I'm not talking about technology in the classroom (ie powerpoint), per se, but rather the ways technology changes the way people's minds work. I just finished TAing for a lecture class in which the Professor gave lectures, containing tons of names and dates and titles, from his head every day. The students were expected to take notes, and then had open-note quizzes and a closed-note final exam based on how well they recorded and recalled all of this data. There were papers, too, and as the TA I graded those based mostly on critical thinking and building an argument. But the fact that large portions of students' grades were determined entirely by how well they memorized facts is almost a foreign concept to me. This is the argument that prophboy, if not entirely Cringely, was making: that evaluating people based on their knowlege, as opposed to their ability to find and process knowledge, is more or less a thing of the past and is made completely outdated by the presence of the internet at our fingertips.
The other issue about this that Cringely raises is: what is the value of presence in educational process? If we follow Auslander, we don't necessarily believe in the unmediated performance. But do we believe that there's a value in sitting in a classroom and learning from a teacher? How is that different from an online course in which we're sitting in a chatroom learning from a teacher? Especially if the students in the classroom are texting or instant messaging instead of listening anyway? As I've been applying for jobs, there have been several (mostly community colleges) that have asked me about my experience teaching online courses. My standard response is that, while this isn't something I've done before, I'm sure I could do it, I'm generally proficient with computers, am familiar with educational software, etc. But honestly, I'm scared of the concept if not the technology. Sure, students can read instead of listening to a lecture or write blog post/comment responses instead of discussing in class, but isn't something of the experience of education lost in that process? And if so, what? Would I want to be a teacher in that kind of system?
And now, my major concern about the Cringely article is that it seems to think it's discussing the whole range of education from k-12 through MIT in one article and one concept, and that doesn't work at all. First of all, what you learn in kindergarten is how to talk to people and play with blocks as much as anything else - it's very tactile and I don't think technology will change that any time soon. Similarly with most of elementary school, being in the classroom and learning to socialize is a relevant (if often unpleasant) part of the education. And most of the things that are taught are basic skills (reading, spelling, arithmatic) that I think that people do need to learn, no matter what comes next. Also, it seems that in elementary school, teachers do have enough authority and a managable student-teacher ratio (although my mom is at 34:1 which seems fairly absurd) that they can prevent the students from texting in class or otherwise using technology as a distraction instead of a tool. They also use technology enough (typing, word processing, occasional computer games) that I think that it's not likely to get away from them.
When it comes to high school, this may be the crux of where things need to adapt and focus more on critical thinking and less on memorizing. The technology can be embraced more. But what technology? There was one teacher in my high school that notoriously insisted on everyone doing group powerpoint presentations. It forced them to confront and learn about the technology, but I'm not sure it made their presentations any better. Texting? How does one incorporate that into the classroom? Is there any way to accept that if you let your students use laptops in class, they will inherently use them to look at gossip sites on the internet and IM their friends rather than listening or participating? Is it possible for teachers to adapt to that?
What we do need to teach, and what seeems obvious to me but seems to elude my students, is how to do research on the internet beyond google and wikipedia. Someone needs to teach them that any online encyclopedia is not a valid academic source for a research paper. There are many great online resources that they can and should use, but they need to see that a private website from some guy is not the same kind of source as an academic journal. This kind of critical thinking in relation to technology should be inherent, but somehow it isn't, and it seems like high school might be the place to teach it. So perhaps they don't need to learn the data itself, but they do need to know where to find it, and how to evaluate it and its source once they have found it.
Personally, I think that the educational system is adaptive enough to integrate technology in productive ways, but there will always be battles about keeping some uses of technology out of the classroom (I heard someone the other day say that before IMing, there were always students reading books or doodling in the back of class, and that is, of course, perfectly true). The issues of presence and what is the value of a college education is a larger question, and one that will continue to haunt us, though I certainly hope it won't bring down the educational system as Cringely suggests it might.
It's interesting to think about academia, which still feels quite often like a holdover from the 13th century actually being challenged and changing due to technology. I'm not talking about technology in the classroom (ie powerpoint), per se, but rather the ways technology changes the way people's minds work. I just finished TAing for a lecture class in which the Professor gave lectures, containing tons of names and dates and titles, from his head every day. The students were expected to take notes, and then had open-note quizzes and a closed-note final exam based on how well they recorded and recalled all of this data. There were papers, too, and as the TA I graded those based mostly on critical thinking and building an argument. But the fact that large portions of students' grades were determined entirely by how well they memorized facts is almost a foreign concept to me. This is the argument that prophboy, if not entirely Cringely, was making: that evaluating people based on their knowlege, as opposed to their ability to find and process knowledge, is more or less a thing of the past and is made completely outdated by the presence of the internet at our fingertips.
The other issue about this that Cringely raises is: what is the value of presence in educational process? If we follow Auslander, we don't necessarily believe in the unmediated performance. But do we believe that there's a value in sitting in a classroom and learning from a teacher? How is that different from an online course in which we're sitting in a chatroom learning from a teacher? Especially if the students in the classroom are texting or instant messaging instead of listening anyway? As I've been applying for jobs, there have been several (mostly community colleges) that have asked me about my experience teaching online courses. My standard response is that, while this isn't something I've done before, I'm sure I could do it, I'm generally proficient with computers, am familiar with educational software, etc. But honestly, I'm scared of the concept if not the technology. Sure, students can read instead of listening to a lecture or write blog post/comment responses instead of discussing in class, but isn't something of the experience of education lost in that process? And if so, what? Would I want to be a teacher in that kind of system?
And now, my major concern about the Cringely article is that it seems to think it's discussing the whole range of education from k-12 through MIT in one article and one concept, and that doesn't work at all. First of all, what you learn in kindergarten is how to talk to people and play with blocks as much as anything else - it's very tactile and I don't think technology will change that any time soon. Similarly with most of elementary school, being in the classroom and learning to socialize is a relevant (if often unpleasant) part of the education. And most of the things that are taught are basic skills (reading, spelling, arithmatic) that I think that people do need to learn, no matter what comes next. Also, it seems that in elementary school, teachers do have enough authority and a managable student-teacher ratio (although my mom is at 34:1 which seems fairly absurd) that they can prevent the students from texting in class or otherwise using technology as a distraction instead of a tool. They also use technology enough (typing, word processing, occasional computer games) that I think that it's not likely to get away from them.
When it comes to high school, this may be the crux of where things need to adapt and focus more on critical thinking and less on memorizing. The technology can be embraced more. But what technology? There was one teacher in my high school that notoriously insisted on everyone doing group powerpoint presentations. It forced them to confront and learn about the technology, but I'm not sure it made their presentations any better. Texting? How does one incorporate that into the classroom? Is there any way to accept that if you let your students use laptops in class, they will inherently use them to look at gossip sites on the internet and IM their friends rather than listening or participating? Is it possible for teachers to adapt to that?
What we do need to teach, and what seeems obvious to me but seems to elude my students, is how to do research on the internet beyond google and wikipedia. Someone needs to teach them that any online encyclopedia is not a valid academic source for a research paper. There are many great online resources that they can and should use, but they need to see that a private website from some guy is not the same kind of source as an academic journal. This kind of critical thinking in relation to technology should be inherent, but somehow it isn't, and it seems like high school might be the place to teach it. So perhaps they don't need to learn the data itself, but they do need to know where to find it, and how to evaluate it and its source once they have found it.
Personally, I think that the educational system is adaptive enough to integrate technology in productive ways, but there will always be battles about keeping some uses of technology out of the classroom (I heard someone the other day say that before IMing, there were always students reading books or doodling in the back of class, and that is, of course, perfectly true). The issues of presence and what is the value of a college education is a larger question, and one that will continue to haunt us, though I certainly hope it won't bring down the educational system as Cringely suggests it might.
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