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February 28, 2006

Postdocs at the Annenberg Center

The Annenberg Center for Communication (ACC) at the University of Southern California invites applications for up to eight postdoctoral positions and one visiting scholar position. These Visiting Research fellows will take part in a major multi-disciplinary research initiative to explore the “The Meaning of the New Networked Age: Innovation, Content, Society, and Policy.” We welcome researchers from various disciplines including anthropology, architecture, the arts, business, communications, computer science, design, economics, engineering, history, international relations, law, library science, neurosciences, political science, rhetoric, and sociology.

ACC is a research institute devoted to the study of new media from a multi-disciplinary perspective. We are in a period of fundamental transformation in the nature of the networks that connect people, information, objects, and locations. But, what does it mean and what, if anything, should be done to guide the process? The ACC research program will explore the drivers of these changes, their meaning, and their implications for business and government policy.

The 2006-2007 theme investigates the structure and evolution of today’s political, social, cultural, technological, and knowledge networks. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- How new technology is transforming politics and citizen engagement worldwide,
- Communication law and policy
- New models of intellectual discourse and citation,
- Peer-to-peer cultural production and distribution,
- The emergence of pervasive mobile and wireless networks.

The ACC intends to convene a multi-disciplinary cohort of scholars to focus on a topic of pressing concern not well addressed in more established disciplinary and departmental institutions. The visiting fellows will work with the ACC’s senior fellows and also will be expected to pursue their research in residence at the Annenberg Center during the 2006-2007 academic year. They will collectively be responsible for organizing one conference and a monthly speakers series, and to attend two weekly Fellows’ seminars of graduate, postdoctoral, and faculty fellows on the theme of the meaning of the new networked age. They may not hold any other appointment during the period of the fellowship.

The postdoctoral fellowship is intended for scholars who have completed their Ph.D since 2001, but we also will consider researchers with at least four years of relevant, real- world experience. The ACC fellowship carries a stipend of $45,000 in addition to a limited amount of funds to support research and relocation expenses.

The visiting scholar position is intended for a mid-career scholar with a well -established track record and demonstrated leadership and expertise related to the theme. The stipend will be commensurate with the scholar’s current position. ACC will also provide a limited amount of funds to support research and relocation expenses.

Applicants should clearly indicate whether they are applying for a postdoctoral position or the visiting scholar position. Applications should include a CV, a cover letter including a personal statement, and a brief statement of research goals in relation to the theme. Three letters of recommendation are to be sent directly by the writers (letters may also be faxed to 213-747-4981). Address all application materials to Elizabeth Harmon, Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern California, 734 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7725. Email contact: eharmon at annenberg dot edu. The deadline for receipt in our office is April 30, 2006.

February 24, 2006

super heros become super common: a stab at the question — web 2.0? so what?

netpublics: participation + change

After half a day and a supper with Yochai Benkler, the above constitutes my notes on his talk and the ensuing conversations.

More notes here

February 17, 2006

Why Pigeons That Blog Matter?

Ever since this "Blogjects" topic has started circulating, I've been asked lots of things, but two questions have come to the fore. First, why would objects want to just blog? Second, why would I care if objects "blog"?


"What does this all mean? Whereas once the pigeon was an urban varmint whose value as a participant in the larger social collective was practically nil or worse, the Pigeon that Blogs now attains first-class citizen status. Their importance quickly shifts from common nuisance and a disgusting menace, to a participant in life and death discussions about the state of the micro-local environment. Pigeons that blog and tell us about the quality of the air we breath are the Web 2.0 progeny of the Canary in the Coal Mine."

I've been working on an essay that addresses these questions as part of a report that Nicolas and I are preparing as a result of the Blogject Workshop we held at Lift06. The basic idea is to enlarge the assumptions about the Internet of Things beyond just a world of Arphids and telematics. The import of the Internet of Things is much larger and the stakes much higher, particularly for occupants of the physical world such as us reading this — that "us" is humans. (Google bots reading this already have anticipated the worldly change that is occurring as the ubiquitous Internet pervades and leaks into physical space.)

The Internet of Things — it's like Web 2.0 for the world's other tenants.

more..

Contextual Flickr Uploader: a step towards a camera blogject

Nicolas points out this context-aware camera phone uploading app. The cool thing here is the way the app is able to add a thin narrative thread to the process of recording one's "life bits."


thx nic



Contextual Flickr Uploader: a step towards a camera blogject:


Transcripting the notes from the blogject workshop, I connected the first project (a blogject camera) to a contextual flickr uploader Chris recently sent us: the Context Watcher developed by a team led by Johan Koolwaaij:

The Context Watcher is a mobile application developed in Python, and running on Nokia Series 60 phones. Its aim is to make it easy for an end-user to automatically record, store, and use context information, e.g. for personalization purposes, as input parameter to information services, or to share with family, friends, colleagues or other relations, or just to log them for future use or to perform statistics on your own life.

The context watcher application is able to record information about the user’s:


Location (based GPS and/or GSM cell based)
* Mood (based on user input)
* Activities and meetings (based on reasoning)
* Body data (based on heart and foot sensors)
* Weather (based on a location-inferred remote weather CP)
* Visual data (pictures enhanced with contextual data)


Why do I blog this? this application is definitely one step towards having blogject. It achieves the first part of the process, which is about having an object that grasps contextual elements (the second would be to let objects have conversations) and upload then on the web.

February 13, 2006

Art Center Talk — The Valentine's Day Lecture

Tomorrow, I will be giving what will almost certainly be referred to by the canon of intellectual history as "The Valentine's Day Lecture." Yes that's right. At Art Center College of Design, I will be presenting my oeuvre as well as some new evocative knowledge objects representing current research vectors. From 10a in the Ahmanson Theater at the Art Center campus

Directions..

Tomorrow, I will be giving what will almost certainly be referred to by the canon of intellectual history as "The Valentine's Day Lecture." Yes that's right. At Art Center College of Design, I will be presenting my oeuvre as well as some new evocative knowledge objects representing current research vectors. From 10a in the Ahmanson Theater at the Art Center campus

Directions from Downtown Los Angeles: North on the 110 Freeway to Pasadena, approximately three miles past Dodger Stadium to Orange Grove Boulevard exit [L], go two miles to Holly Street Signal [L], to Linda Vista [R] (you will be entering a residential area); continue for two miles to Lida Street signal [L]. Continue on Lida Street to the top of the hill; you will see the see the Art Center sign on your left.

Directions from the Westside:
Take the 10 East to the 405 North. Then take the 101 East to the 134 East to
Pasadena. Get off at the Linda Vista exit, take a right at the top of the
ramp, and then a quick left, veer toward the right and go under the Colorado
Bridge and past the first stoplight, which is Holly. Continue on Linda Vista
(you will be in a residential area); continue for two miles to Lida Street
signal and go left. Continue on Lida Street to the top of the hill; you will
see the see the Art Center sign on your left.

February 9, 2006

Anatomy of an NSF Proposal Unable To Be Funded

Here's another rejected proposal. It was a long shot, even as I wrote it last summer. (The summary of the proposal is available here.)

In quick words, improvising: It is a proposal to study collaboration amongst scientists, engineers, and artists through the lens of science and technology studies. I want to understand the particular ways in which art/emerging-technologists work within the DIY sensibility, along with collaborations with discliplinary engineers/scientists to create a differentiated ecosystem of research & development practices. Like..what does it all mean when engineers and artists get in the room and work together? It can't all be just about aesthetics, can it? Isn't there something about the nature of those collaborations that has the potential to produce some other kind of design practice that reaches beyond what other formal R&D practices are able to produce? Like, mixing artistic sensibilities with engineering sensibilities seems like it would be a potent way to create richer designed experiences, or fashion designs that create an imaginary for more habitable worlds, or other things that go beyond the narrow tenents of traditional R&D? No? Am I wrong? I think I'm on-point here, but I doubt I was able to get the point across in the short time I took to write the grant proposal. Oh well. There's next year, too.

I did get one "Very Good" and a "Good/Fair", but two "Poors" (I'm being optimistic in hoping that there is no "Very Poor"), and someone who said I was going on a fishing expedition around the world. I'll skip any substantive editorial or direct response to the review comments except to mention a couple of my favorites.

Read more..

Lift06 — Why This Conference Will Continue To Be Important

Several of you have asked what the heck this Lift06 thing was and why I went. I've summarized my thoughts here.
excerpt

The wonderful thing about Lift06 was that it was like what I would want O'Reilly Etech to be — creative, out of the box innovators, tinkerers, makers, funders, idea, but with diversity of goals and objectives (and, of course, about 6 times cheaper.) I think Etech is great — I'll continue to go, and present when its right and relevant — but what Lift06 was able to do was open the audience up. It wasn't just about the Tribe of Alpha Geeks and friends-of-Tim getting together to share with each other what they already know about each other or to pitch their latest VC bait. Lift06 was opportunity to hear, discuss and participate. It was a chance to be a part of the emergence of new ways to create, maintain and knit together networks of social relations and move social formations in a way that will hopefully create new habitable worlds. Enough tech geek to keep me happy and excited and eager for Lift07, and enough conversations around reinvigorating existing and creating new social practices to make me feel like I was a part of something that was circulating culture in a promising vector.

Read more about why this conference will continue to be important.

February 8, 2006

OGLE: OpenGL Extractor

Eyebeam R&D hits again with this pretty sweet open-source OpenGL extractor, OGLE. What's the drill?

OGLE (i.e. OpenGLExtractor) is software package by Eyebeam R&D that allows for the capture and re-use of 3D geometry data from 3D graphics applications running on Microsoft Windows. It works by observing the data flowing between 3D applications and the system's OpenGL library, and recording that data in a standard 3D file format.
The primary motivation for developing OGLE is to make available for re-use the 3D forms we see and interact with in our favorite 3D applications. Video gamers have a certain love affair with characters from their favorite games; animators may wish to reuse environments or objects from other applications or animations which dont provide data-level access; architects could use this to bring 3D forms into their proposals and renderings; and digital fabrication technologies make it possible to automatically instantiate 3D objects in the real world.

Rhizome Net Art Commissions!

Get your proposal on, yo! $900 to 3 large! And exposure!

Rhizome is pleased to announce that with support from the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, between eight and eleven new Internet art projects will be commissioned in 2006.
The fee for each commission will range from $900 – $3,000.
Artists are invited to submit proposals for new works of Internet-based art. There is no required theme. The works can manifest offline, as long as the Internet is a primary vehicle in the creation of the work, and the final work is accessible online, whether through a web browser, software, or some other use of internet technologies.
When evaluating proposals, the jury will consider artistic merit, technical feasibility, and online accessibility. Although we will provide some technical assistance with final integration into the Rhizome web site, artists are expected to develop projects independently and without significant technical assistance from Rhizome.

Rhizome.

And, while you're at it — add Rhizome Opportunities to your favorite RSS Aggregator.

Professionalization, Conferences, and The Circulation of Knowledge: My Years of Accumulating Rejection

Has anyone discussed the submissions process for professional conferences — the important, if infamously flawed, social mixer for the knowledge production class? No? Not entirely? I think it would be worth taking the time to do start a short introduction to the topic. And what better way to describe the magic of turning your brilliant ideas into scholarly and intellectual coin than a real life example of such an attempt failing miserably? I'll go ahead and not bother to remove my name, as my innocence is well known to be suspect anyway, and the hideous process I describe in what follows is protected through a process that should be familiar to anyone who's watched an episode of CSI — the anonymous grand jury, or in this case, the anonymous reviewer.

It's a tough game. I enjoy playing it immensely, despite the pain. I don't have expectations that I will obtain more than an average and low acceptance record, particularly because I play at the boundaries of acceptable theory, objects, practice and approach to knowledge production. That's okay — I enjoy being at the edge, much more than in the center. I am also much more satisfied than this post might sound — not perfectly satisfied, but okay. And I am really happy to have a mechanism for circulating what I think to a wider audience. Sharing such things as these reviews makes it a bit more tolerable.

Why "Accumulate Rejection." It means you're out there taking risks, probing for your audience, and continuing to circulate ideas, insights and culture. It's kind of like being an actor, going on auditions. Or worse, a comedian, playing the circuit.

Brace yourself.

My Years of Accumulating Rejection


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