professional

In 2011 I was looking for new ways to play with ideas. I had just finished my first semester in graduate school and while class assignments kept me busy and the conversations I had with my fellow graduate students were deeply rewarding I wanted something else. Something a little more public and a lot more focused on writing. I was surprised that, at least in my program, there was very little attention paid to the craft of writing. How to convey a complicated idea in an elegant way, or how to identify your audience, were absent from even the most pragmatic training. (This is not true in all programs and less true for that particular department now, than it was five years ago.) In college I frequently read and shared Sociological Images articles and one day, while procrastinating on my very first round of graduate school finals I noticed that The Society Pages had multiple blogs. Instead of writing my finals I wrote a short thing about drones and video editing suites and before I knew it I was regularly contributing to this blog. In a few short years I was submitting things to bigger publications, and now I’m an editor here with Jenny and wow what a wild ride.

Last month I read Kelly Conaboy’s Blog, You Idiots and it got me thinking about the process, style, and frequency of my own writing. I’ve been editing more and writing less, and I’d like to change that. Jenny and I have been editing guest posts but the editing that has taken up most of my time is editing my own stuff. There’s probably half a dozen would-be essays in my Cyborgology folder that end right about here, in the second paragraph, where the hook or thesis should go. I think this means I need to get back to writing what Conaboy called for: “just a little thing that you read and enjoy.”

I will be writing more, soon, but before I rearrange the pace of my work schedule to accommodate that promise I thought I would put down into words a workshop I have run twice now on helping academics write for more public audiences. The intention here is to identify some of the common problems academics have in writing engaging, thoughtful, and relatively short essays. Much of it comes down to pacing and working with others. more...

Content Note: This post deals with the trigger warnings, the belittling of people who ask for them, and embarrassment in the classroom.

I have been lucky enough to get professional advice from some truly wonderful people and many of them have told me that the key to a productive and fulfilling academic exchange of ideas is to give others the benefit of the doubt and be generous in your reading of their work. Assume that everyone wants to make the world a better place through the sharing of their ideas and if you disagree with them it is because you more or less disagree on what that better place looks like. I am going to continue working on that but today I am going to gift myself one last moment where I truly believe there are people that are out there who want to make life harder for millions of people.

If you shared that last Atlantic article about trigger warnings in college classrooms, and you have nothing to do with higher education, I think you are a hateful person. more...

We have a two-month break from self-inflicted government crisis, so let’s use it to take a breather, assess the situation, and cast some shade on rich people. Not because it is cathartic (it is), or because it will prevent the next crisis (it won’t); rather, I think studying the contours of the government-shaped hole of the last three weeks can teach us something about how Silicon Valley views public ownership. This is important because we typically use metaphors[1] like “the commons” or “the public” to describe their products. These words imply a sense of trust, if not mutually assured disruption: sure a rich guy might own Twitter on paper but it becomes worthless if everyone stops treating it as a (if not the) center of daily life. What do the people that own these service/spaces think about the de facto collective ownership of their product? more...

Here is a list of skills that, as a grad student at one time or another, I’ve been expected to have with absolutely no offered training whatsoever: more...

Below is a partial transcript of the introductory remarks I gave at the Technoscience as Activism Conference held in Troy, New York and hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from June 26-28, 2012. The conference was funded by the NSF’s GK-12 Fellowship Program. 

I almost never read my presentations but we’re short on time and there’s a lot of stuff that I want to share with you and I don’t want to miss anything. Publicly reading an apology for reading in public is an apt metaphor for what this conference is about, or more precisely what it is a response to. When I approached Dr. Ron Eglash about putting on this conference I told him I only wanted to do it if I could make the conference reflect the kind of politics espoused in the presentations. I don’t want to invite a bunch of brilliant people to Troy, who want to talk about democratizing science and technology, and keep them in a single room all day. Troy should benefit from some of your unique experiences, and the people of Troy have done some amazing things that I think the visitors will enjoy and appreciate. more...

By now, we have all heard the warning: potential employers will look at your Facebook page. We have been sufficiently terrified by the cautionary tale about the keg-stand profile pic (why is it always a keg stand?) that kept some otherwise capable candidate from getting hired. Indeed, we have taken note, with increased utilization of privacy settings and a collective awareness by job candidates about the visibility of social network sites.

Now, with the quickly spreading news of Justin Bassett, the warnings (and inevitable cautionary tales) become more epic. Bassett is a statistician out of New York, who, while on a job interview, was asked to log in to his social network profile. Bassett not only refused, but shared his story widely, sparking debates about privacy, employee rights, and the blurring line between personal and professional.   more...

I’ve thought it interesting the relative lack of major social media stories to come from the sports world relative to politics, music, academia and other significant public institutions. However, this past Sunday an explosion of Twitter activity was directed at Chicago Bears quarterback Jason Cutler, creating a prime example of how the Twitterverse can change the way people consume sports. And perhaps even how the game is played.

The story begins with Cutler sitting on the sidelines, injured, watching his team lose a game against the long-time rival Green Bay Packers that would have sent his Bears to the Super Bowl. During the loss, Twitter exploded with calls for Cutler to get back in the game. Some of the most prominent criticisms came from NFL players. The rise of social media means that the story -that Cutler didn’t have the heart to rise above the injury- was already being written before the game was over. After his team lost, he was immediately questioned by the Twitter-connected media. With tears in his eyes, Cutler delivered no comment.

This is arguably one of the biggest intrusions of social media into the highly-guarded and secretive arena of professional sports. more...