Heidegrrrrrr.

"Heidegger observed that technology worked to promote a shrinking of the world. While technology enabled a breaching of distance, it also concealed other forms of interaction which take place within the world. Heidegger argued that the essential nature of things lay in their 'nearness.' Nearness involves how things reveal themselves as meaningful within the context of our dealings with them. Instead of bringing things near, the shrinking of distance and time by technological means has caused nearness to withdraw."
*Simon Cooper*

We tend to think of technological artifacts as mere tools that extend one or another of our limbs or senses. A phone just amplifies a voice that's too far away to hear with the naked ear. A pair of glasses make words and faces come into focus when our eyes aren't up to the task. But by bringing the world in--by making it louder and sharper--do we lose touch with the "essential nature" of the things that fill it?

This makes me wonder if people, too, have a "nearness." Maybe they do. Is it possible that a person's nearness can still reveal itself if it's mediated by technology? Or is it inevitably concealed by the medium through which it's transmitted? Hiding under a layer of carcinogenic, electromagnetic waves... I'd like to think that someone could reach through those waves and find another person floating on a raft and sipping a daiquiri on a nearby crest.

(I know I'm completely skewering Cooper--and in the process, Heidegger too--but so be it.)

Questioning Builds a Way.

I spend a lot of time reading things on the Internet. I bring this confession to you unabashedly. I find the entire existence of the Internet, and the text written upon and within it, endlessly fascinating. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the contents of my Google Reader page. Funnily enough, the very week I was giving this some thought, we discussed one of these concepts in my class--namely how technology has somewhat blurred the line between work and play, and also inverted their relationship to a certain extent. As a byproduct of the information economy, now some people get paid a wage to supply ideas that emerge from activities we would traditionally consider a part of playtime. And conversely: now employers bake playtime into their employees' work days under the pretext of caring about the employee as a human, not just a cog in the wheel. How does this relate to my Google Reader page? Well, in one sitting, I read friends' blogs, vegan food recipes, Red sox updates, and countless news sources about technology & society. My classmate added his own illustration of reading sources he relies on for "work" within minutes of checking out the latest LOLcat. I'm not sure how I would even begin to parse out that sitting into "work" and play."

Just when I was starting to feel guilty for letting my eyes spend precious time reading up on how to make blueberry muffins using egg-replacer, I stumbled on this amazing piece of prose concerning time and our use of it, and knowledge and the vitality of our subjective grip on it, and most importantly, how that whole question about work/play I just spent a paragraph trying to describe doesn't even matter.

On the one hand, this essay supports the idea that work and play can no longer be separated so easily into pre-defined buckets. On the other hand, it wholly substantiates and validates my endless procrastination. Mostly what I love about it is the giant middle finger it gives to anything close to a prescriptive ordering of our lives. We're told to specialize--to focus--but as Tozier explains, this only cuts off the most interesting path where it's just getting good. To generalize is to ask more questions, to find (and subsequently celebrate) the connections between the bits you find most hair-raising in this world.

This is not to say that my Google Reader page defines me in any way, or that it could do a better job of representing me than, say, this blog could, or even better--a bona fide face-to-face conversation with me would reveal*. But the myriad sites on Google Reader are connected through me, the endlessly delaying, and increasingly unashamed generalist.

*this conversation will reveal even more if, in addition to talking to you, I am also consuming bourbon.

boo recommends 2.

Click here for the first installment of "boo recommends."

Developing Your Thesis Before You Write Your Paper
Yeah, I wrote a 5 page paper of gobbledy-gook, mish-mashed nonsense. Then I had the bright idea to turn in this drivel rather than ask for an extension (I'm not an extension-requesting kind of boo). And now I'm paying for my mistake by spending Spring Break rewriting it. Starting with the thesis.

Dinner Parties at Friends' Houses
Food tastes better when you make it with your friends. I would be surprised if this wasn't already scientifically proven.

Vitamins you can drink
So much more fun than swallowing nasty horse pills, and so much more mature than chewing candy in the shape of Fred Flintstone.

liquid love.

a little known fact about me: I like to take pictures of the beverages I drink while I'm studying or spending time with beloveds. I do this for several reasons: I love coffee and tea, I love drinking them with others, and taking pretty pictures of them in cups reminds me of what was going on at the time -- who was sitting across the table from me, what I was reading, who I was creepily checking out, so on and so forth...

Since I have to get a new phone, I will be losing all of these pictures, so I decided to keep them here for a while.
As you can see, there are some differences among them: sometimes i drank tea. sometimes coffee. sometimes americanos. the pictures also represent different places: dc. boston. school. cafes.
But there are also some common themes: sunshine is one. colored mugs is another. deep appreciation for hot beverages and good company is a third (though my shitty camera phone doesn't always capture that one so vividly and though one of the beverages pictured below is iced).

uhh...

I just fell asleep in the shower. no joke.
also: I haven't eaten spinach in 3 days.

in search of glue.

I really want to be sleeping but my brain has been humming for too many hours and now I can't shut it off.

contents of the hum:

I've been putting some pressure on myself these days -- a bit of it is due, and a bit of it is undue--and I guess I'm trying to sort out how to attend to the due parts (the undue will always persist regardless of how much attention I throw its way, and really, I should be focusing on why I put undue pressure on myself, not what that nagging, vague force is compelling me to do).

You see, this program I'm in resembles, in some ways, scattershot pellets shot into a dark night from a well-intentioned rifle (where pellets = my academic courses of study and dark night = my future). This is the nature of interdisciplinarity, and I get that. Not only do I get it, but I also signed up for it and it's a little late in the game to be complaining about it.

However, now in my last semester, I'm craving a way to tie it all together. I want to weave the last four semesters into a pretty french braid. As a useful corollary, it's Week 6 of my classes which means I'm supposed to be thinking about what I want to work on for my final projects. But all I can come up with are loosely linked concepts that I care deeply about and want to cohere into a larger idea that makes my motor rev. (Oh, how I want, so desperately, to rev.)

Here, in no particular order, are the aforementioned half-baked concepts:

• collective action -- the power of mobs
• social capital as a byproduct of virtual activism (in other words, just because we can't always quantify the benefits of online political movements doesn't mean that their effects are moot)
  
• the (un)importance of transparency/authenticity in building trust

In other news, I realized that I am addicted to spinach. see also: caffeine and songs about robots.

boo recommends.

I'm totally aping this idea from McSweeney's, but I think every once in a while I'm going to create a list of recommendations, i.e., things I stumble on and/or have loved long enough to calcify into my daily routine. Perhaps you will find these recommendations helpful, or perhaps you will simply find them fodder for your ongoing campaign to tease me into silence. Either way, I hope you enjoy.


Pre-cubed Tofu
It bears more than a striking resemblance to a foam pit but it saves time. An added bonus: for some reason, tofu in pre-cubed form seems to absorb less of the packaging water which means you don't have to press it before you use it.

Said the Gramophone
Music blogs rarely inspire me. This one does on nearly a daily basis. Things I'm inspired to do: purchase music. listen to music. fall in love. write. walk through a blizzard. try harder.

Red/green felt tip pens
Last semester I was in the CVS pen aisle when I found these old school beauties. What do they grant me? The freedom to mark significant passages and take notes in my school reading without having to use a highlighter (which I hate). Two functions in one! The spork of the writing instrument world.

Scrabulous
Surely many of you are already hep to the beauty of this Facebook application, a.k.a., the only reason I visit Facebook more than once a month. This unassuming game can take many forms: procrastination tool, olive branch, harmless flirting mechanism, acceptably modest forum for above-average vocabulary. As far as I can tell, its only negatives are that it allows ridiculous two-letter words ("ne"? "da"?) and it doesn't automatically kick me out even after I've spent 45 minutes trying to figure out a 6-letter word that ends in "J."

Sisters
If at all possible, try to make yours a twin. But in the event you were conceived at two different times, then aim for yours to be witty and intuitive. Even better if she can call you on your shit when you need it most.

Creative wrapping paper
The wrapping paper industry makes no sense to me. Why would I spend $7 on a roll of pretty paper that will soon lose its cohesive luster? Instead, I try to re-use wrappy things I already own: old magazines, rags, W-2 tax forms, shower curtains (not clear!).