the daily boo.

This past week, I spent 40 hours sitting at a desk, looking at a corporate computer and wishing I had access to a personalized little literary gem called my Google Reader page.

Google Reader is probably Nicholas Negroponte's worst nightmare about the emergence of digital media, but it's my most wonderful dream fulfilled. He worried that technology would enable people to choose to hear only the voices with which they agreed rather than the assortment of attitudes and tastes one finds scattered unfiltered throughout the media. An enormous echo chamber without dissent, the Internet would reify people's opinions, not challenge them. As a result, the chasm between us would grow as our disparate ideas hardened into distinct truths and we replaced plurality with complacency.

The way I see it, Google Reader helps me keep my life in order. While I'm sitting in my overly air-conditioned office, toiling over marketing collateral and remembering wistfully the endless hours I used to spend in coffeeshops, my Reader is slowly accumulating and filtering terabytes of information so that today, my first weekend day as an employed person, I can return to my Google Reader page and see an aggregate of the news and updates I missed while at work.

More to the point, Google Reader doesn't, by necessity, estrange me from the thoughts and ideas of those different from me; it brings me closer to them. As always, the problem isn't the technology itself. We shouldn't shun tools that allow us to customize what we see and hear. The problem is that sometimes we take the easy way out. We cover our ears when someone disagrees with us. And in this age, technology affords us not only the means to find people who think like we do, but also the ability to tune out those who don't. So, it seems to me we need to shift our focus from whipping ourselves into a centripetal ball of tightly held opinions to remembering that evolution relies on diversity.

To that end, why can't my Google Reader page make recommendations for sites I should visit that aren't similar to those I already read? Why not look at my list and say, "boo reads Talking Points Memo; maybe she'd also enjoy National Review"?... Okay, "enjoy" might be a bit generous, but you hear what I'm saying, right? After all, you probably already agree with me.

material life, accumulated.

There's nothing like carrying all of your belongings up a few flights of stairs to get you thinking about the place that *stuff* holds in your life.

Since I never really unpacked much of the stuff I moved down from Boston 2 years ago, sifting through my various boxes has thrown me full-force into a wall of complex emotions. To name a few: frustration, relief, glee, shame, and wonder.

Frankly, I'm somewhat shocked that this exercise produced any reaction in me other than mere exhaustion. I've never been all that tethered to things. I would much rather sacrifice nostalgia for convenience and buy everything I need off Craigslist than carefully port my furniture from apartment to apartment as I move up and down the east coast. Since I do move so often, I don't hold on to much that doesn't yield a particular sentimental or utilitarian value.

And yet! This moving process hasn't been without its own redeeming attributes. I've:

• found lost keys to locked boxes of things I thought I'd eventually have to blow up with a stick of dynamite, wile e. coyote style.

• read many, many old letters--byproducts of my 16-year relationship with the united states postal service--and taken note of some of the ways in which my friendships have changed through the years.

• remembered that I am a hopeless paper packrat. I just can't/don't throw out bank statements, insurance policies that have long since expired, or receipts for items I've since sold (on Craigslist). I live as if I'm one step away from a life audit wherein I'd be asked for documented proof of my participation in the capitalist juggernaut. It's such a dumb (and heavy) approach to self-organization.

Twittered Out.

For one of my final papers, I decided to look a bit more closely at Twitter, the micro-blogging service that's sweeping the geeky nation. I first heard about Twitter last year when a friend sent me an invitation to join (not that it's a club, but he thought that telling his friends personally might encourage them to accompany him on the Twitter journey). So, I checked it out and read all about how Twitter would allow me to keep my friends abreast of every facet of my daily minutiae (except they phrase it a bit more appealingly). My immediate thought was, "um, why in the world would my friends care?"

You see, Twitter works kind of like those silly Facebook status updates. But it's like a status update (called a "tweet") that you can write from anywhere--your phone or instant messaging service or simply through the site itself. I seriously wouldn't be surprised if by next week, they figured out a way to send tweets via carrier pigeon.

Twitter is very straightforward. In fact, compared to other technological devices, it's remarkably unassuming. It works by prompting you to answer the following question (within a 140 character limit): "What are you doing?" As you can imagine, this yields a wide variety of responses, but as you can probably also imagine, few of them are actually very interesting.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm often surprised by how entertaining/informative those silly Facebook status updates can be. I just can't imagine why my friends would ever want to hear little bits about my life in real time, especially when I'm (rather impersonally) telling all of them at once.

"Boo is writing a paper."
"Boo is pacing."
"Boo is eating cereal."
"Boo is looking at photoshopped pictures in which the babies' and men's heads have been switched! http://manbabies.com/1"

See what I mean?

Anyway, for my paper, I decided to look at how presidential candidates were using Twitter in their campaigns. And do you know what I found out? Their lives are just as boring as mine! Not surprisingly, Obama and Clinton use Twitter to alert their "followers" (people who sign up to receive their tweets) of upcoming press appearances, or to remind them to register to vote. McCain, however, likes to tweet attacks on his opponents. My favorite was: "Barack's people ask vulgar question of McCain http://twurl.nl/s0kcuc"

I should take a step back from my criticism for a moment and say that I absolutely understand how Twitter can be useful. After all, it's helped to free someone from an Egyptian jail, report an earthquake in Mexico before the USGS got on the case, and organize activists.

In other words, micro-blogging serves its purpose. I get that. And I think it'll be interesting to see if it ends up filling a gap in investigative journalism or allowing organizers to keep a step ahead of the police trying to shut them down, or making conferences run more smoothly than they typically do. But as a service that supposedly offers some value to my life, I just don't see it.

So, I think I'll keep my tweets to myself for now.

an unlikely source of cruelty.

I just looked up from my frozen, immobile, panoptic cell in the library to see a ladybug crawling on the window right next to me. clearly, it's taunting me. I've never before felt any venom towards a ladybug, but today, when it's beautiful outside and i'm indoors, trying hard to care about my last final in grad school, I just want it to fly away and enjoy the sunshine/greenery out of my line of vision...

dispatch from the bowels of the library.

In the past 72 hours, I have...

consumed:

coffee
cereal
the media

thought about:

collective action
how much i dislike belle and sebastian (and why)

counted:

caterpillars on the sidewalk with my niece
to 10 before i lost my cool

wrapped:

my head around Heidegger (result: a half-baked final paper)
my eye socket around someone's shoulder (result: a black eye)

eureka!

“A commodity is truly available when it can be enjoyed as a mere end, unencumbered by means.”
(Albert Borgmann)

HOMOnyms

My new favorite:

Aciphex/Ass Effects

"Aciphex can help manage the effects of acid reflux disease, working to cool the heartburn and helping your body to help itself."