In preparation for the 2012 Quantified Self Conference on 15 and 16 September (#QS2012), I’ll be spending the next two weeks writing about the “self knowledge through numbers” group Quantified Self (@QuantifiedSelf). This week, I focus on self-quantification in relation to my masters work on what I’ve termed biomedicalization 2.0; next week I’ll focus on my upcoming dissertation project, which will look specifically at emotional self-quantification (or “mood tracking”).
We all know the trope: In The Future—near or distant—food will come in the form of a pill. The pill will offer optimal proportions of all necessary nutrients. It will be calorically dense, vitamin infused, moderately fatted, protein filled, fiber enhanced, time released, and highly precise. The consumer will be satiated. The body will be healthy. This is a pill of perfect consumptive efficiency. This is the predicted diet of the cyborg.
Indeed, as cyborgs, our practices of (literal) consumption are characterized by scientific engineering. Our food and food practices are more a product of laboratory and factory work than the sweat of tilling farmers. And yet, we have not come up with a successful food-replacement pill. Instead, we’ve generally (though not ubiquitously) developed a market and a mindset that moves away from efficiency, developing and utilizing technological advancements to maximally consume with minimal caloric absorption. I offer here a few examples: more...
Last week I wrote a piece on the increasing prevalence of the Bokeh blur effect – and other filmic effects – in forms of visual media where we once saw them rarely if at all. Nathan Jurgenson then followed up with a response that articulated some interesting and important questions that this trend raises – which I want to consider further here, though please don’t mistake this as anything other than additional groping toward something that still needs a lot of working-through.
I’ve been thinking on and off since mid-summer about a hole I’ve identified in our collective theorizing of augmented reality. To illustrate it, imagine the following conversation:
Digital Dualist: ‘Online’ and ‘offline’ are two distinct, separate worlds!
Me: That’s not true. ‘Online’ and ‘offline’ are part of the same augmented reality.
Digital Dualist: Are you saying that ‘online’ and ‘offline’ are the same thing?
Me: No, of course not. Atoms and bits have different properties, but both are still part of the same world.
Digital Dualist: So ‘online’ and ‘offline’ are different, but not different worlds?
Me: Correct.
Digital Dualist: But if they’re not different worlds, then what kind of different thing are they?
Me: …
I don’t know about you, but this is where I get stuck.
Photos by Nathan Jurgenson, taken in Washington, D.C., 17, January 2012.
Malcolm Harris has posted one of the most provocative things I’ve ever read about social media, “Twitterland.” I’d like to point you the story and go through some of the many issues he brings to light. Harris’ story is one of theorizing Twitter and power; it can reinforce existing power imbalances, but, as is the focus here, how it can also be used to upset them.
Digital Dualism
Harris begins by taking on the idea that Twitter is a “tool” or an “instrument”, arguing that, no, Twitter is not a map, but the territory; not the flier but the city itself; hence the title “Twitterland.” However, in nearly the same breath, Harris states he wants to “buck that trend” of “the faulty digital-dualist frame the separates ‘real’ and online life.” As most readers here know, I coined the term digital dualism and provided the definition on this blog and thus have some vested interest in how it is deployed. And Harris’ analysis that follows indeed bucks the dualist trend, even though I would ask for some restating of the more theoretical parts of his argument. I’d like to urge Harris not to claim that Twitter is a new city, but instead focus on how Twitter has become part of the city-fabric of reality itself. more...
Alva Noë at NPR wrote an excellent opinion piece over the weekend on Lance Armstrong’s decision to stop fighting the United States Anti-Doping Agency—which accuses the seven-time Tour de France winner of ingesting performance enhancing drugs.
Noë argues not that Armstrong ‘didn’t do it’—on the contrary, most expert commentators agree that he probably did dope, along with all other high level cyclers—but that ‘doping’ is a logical component of competitive sports in a cyborg era. Noë concludes with a key point and a provocative question:
He didn’t win races on his own. No, Like each of us in our social embeddings, he created an organization, drawing on other people, and the creative and effective use of technology, the mastery of biochemistry, to go places and do things that most of us never will, that no one ever had, before him. That we now attack him, and tear him down, and try to minimize his achievements…what does this tell us about ourselves?
I want to take on this question, and in doing so, further flesh out the points that Noë brings to the fore. more...
Stories In Focus, posted by Sarah Wahnecheck two days ago, is a brief exploration of Bokeh that strikes me as a great start to something bigger. This is just a quick followup, asking Sarah and others to think more about the reality that amateur, documentary and news footage is increasingly coming to look like art films, specifically the effect of having one thing in sharp focus with the rest blurred and out of focus. more...
Before the 2012 meeting of the American Sociological Association kicked off last week, I challenged those of us who tweet at conferences—or “backchannel”—to reach out to those who don’t. (Nathan Jurgenson has since made a convincing argument for why ‘backchannel’ isn’t the right word for this practice, though I’m not yet aware of a good replacement term.) This week, I want to share some of my preliminary observations and questions about gender and Twitter use at ASA2012 by looking at Marc Smith’s (@marc_smith) Twitter NodeXL social network analysis maps.
So first off, what are we looking in the graph above?
The Communication and Information Technologies section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA) was founded in 1988. Since its inception, the membership has evolved, as have the mission, perspectives, and the empirical world of study.
As a section member, one who just participated in five days of conferencing at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting (ASA2012), I am reminded of the need to look critically and reflexively at our social worlds—especially those aspects to which we hold strong attachments. In this vein, I am simultaneously energized about the role of new technologies in social life, and uncertain about the role of a special section dedicated to their study. In short, I am led to the question: Do we need the CITASA section? more...
Bodies and screens, voices and tweets, hallways and backchannels, experiencing the American Sociological Association meetings this weekend in Denver means stepping into an atmosphere oversaturated with information. The bombardment can sometimes be overwhelming, with more sessions than you can attend and more tweets than you can read. This isn’t going to be a post on why we should use Twitter at conferences, Whitney Erin Boesel already did that more diplomaticly than I could pull off. Anyways, framing it as ‘why do we continue to meet face-to-face?’ would be more interesting for me. Instead, I simply want to argue that there will not be separate online and offline conferences happening, that Twitter isn’t a backchannel and the session room isn’t the front. The reality of the conference is always both digital and physical for everyone whether their noses are buried in a screen, sheets of paper, or staring unblinkingly at the podium. more...
