BitchBuzz: The Digital Revolution Will be Gendered

I should start this post with a shout out to the fabulous Maura McHugh, a new friend who shared a fabulous, nigh on four hour lunch with me on Tuesday. Obviously we found a lot to talk about. Those of you who tend to think of me as taciturn would have been surprised. Of course we are now plotting world domination -- that's just how we roll.

I'm off to Scotland today: big smiles all around.

My column today brings together a number of things that have happened lately. If it's less light-hearted than most of my columns, it's because I'm fed up. Again. As I say at the end, I have been fighting the same fights since childhood. World, you're on notice.

The [Digital] Revolution Will Be Gendered

By K.A. Laity

Someone on Facebook shared a link to a film that looked like it hit directly at the conundrum of the digital age: suddenly the world has opened up to a lot more people who can share their creations with a much wider audience than ever before. A film no longer requires a torturous studio system of development hell and artistic interference; just kickstart and go.

On the other hand, the burgeoning cacophony of the digital explosion gets harder and harder to wade through. As the traditional gatekeepers disappear, how do audiences find the good stuff—and how do artists find their audiences?

The film is PressPausePlay. Created by a Swedish "creative agency" (which seems to be the new name for "advertising agency") it has a description that seems full of potential and a screen capture of Moby:

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era.

I should say I did enjoy a lot of the film and there are many interesting points made in it (as well as a lot of blather that could have been cut) but as I watched I began to experience a familiar sinking feeling: about twenty minutes or so went by before they spoke to someone who was not male. Another fifteen minutes before they spoke with someone who wasn't obviously Caucasian.

Is it really that difficult?...

Read the rest over at BBHQ. And think about your privilege before you ask for that cookie.

Surprises and Melancholia (Bitch Buzz)

I meant to do a Friday Forgotten Book, but today took a few unexpected turns which involved a glorious day at the beach, a much overdue haircut and a shiny new iPad2 (thank you Fulbright Foundation) which is charging now. So I have added some lovely photos to the Ireland photo album, including a cute little Scottie dog (oddly enough, I'm working on a story that has one as a character). It's often difficult to get the corvids to sit still long enough -- or close enough -- to get a good picture, but rooks have been the best so far. Sitting in a tree on Claddagh Walk, one proved low enough to allow me to get a couple of shots that look all right. I keep trying to get the hooded crows and the magpies -- they're such fun to watch, but wisely wary of humans. Of course, in Galway there are always swans.

Low tide always has such interesting textures in the sand. I like the barnacles and seaweed exposed as the water recedes. Such a variety of textures. Makes for interesting pictures. And there's always my favourite spot. Sigh. It's so picturesque.

My column is up a bit later than usual: overdose on film coverage in the wake of the even more disappointing than usual choices. How the impact of a film like Melancholia could be overlooked seems a mystery. Oh wait, no it doesn't. It focuses on women and isn't a "chick flick" (horrid term).

Oscar Nomination Melancholia

As Bitch Magazine has already observed, the sky is blue, water is wet, and the Oscar nominations are a big feminist disappointment. This seems to be the year they officially become as irrelevant as the Grammys, an industry showcase that reflects no vision of reality outside the industrial boardrooms. In a year when awards can be offered for run-of-the-mill biopics that make horrid people "vulnerable" and "human" (one begins to suspect a subterranean right wing campaign funding both the films and the awards). At least the National Society of Film Critics and the jury at Cannes  picked up on it.

In the seemingly ever smaller number of films that pass the Bechdel Test, one major film got completely overlooked for the major awards: Lars von Trier's Melancholia. It's kind of stunning because it includes the sort of bravura acting that usually gets awards—had it been men in the roles, perhaps the statues would be lining up. Perhaps it was the uneasy accusations of misogyny leveled at von Trier particularly in the wake of Antichrist. But here's the thing: every female character does not have to be a squeaky clean role model or redeemed hooker. Male characters have the space to be good, bad or better yet, complicated. Women remain largely relegated to secondary roles in most films and to films dismissed as 'chick flicks' when they star in them.

Melancholia is no chick flick. It is harrowing in so many ways—not least for the unflinching portrayal of real depression...

Read the rest at BBHQ as always. I have more to say about Melancholia, I think. I've really only scratched the surface here: I want to talk about visualising the end of the world -- and the music, too. Anon -- always too much to do!

BitchBuzz: The Minuses of Google+

My column this week takes on the latest major player in the social media sweepstakes. If I get 'disappeared' you'll know where to find me (buried in some AltaVista search results with Ask Jeeves).

The Minuses of Google+

By K. A. Laity

The world's biggest search engine attempts to be social...

It's the greatest things since sliced beets, a Facebook killah, or um, a big new sandbox whose potential remains untapped. It's certainly growing fast. In a hyperbolic headline, Business Insider breathlessly shouted, "Google Plus Is DESTROYING Facebook's Dreams, And Facebook Isn't Playing Fair." Because of Google+'s  speedy acquisition of nearly 20 million users, Facebook apparently has been "alienating users, rather than being a gentleman." Surely unheard of in business interactions! The ungentlemanly actions taken include not allowing G+ to automate exporting all your friends lists from Facebook. Writer David Seaman was so taken with Google+ that he has burned his bridges...

Read the rest over at BBHQ as always and feel free to share it and comment.

I'm aiming for another yard sale on Saturday. At present it's supposed to be not as hot and no rain. Fingers crossed. Come take stuff I need to get rid of!

Blogger Has Been Down

Hence the lack of posting: more soon.

BitchBuzz: The Internet Will Kill You

Crash bang wallop: it's that kind of day. I thought I had already resigned myself to the fact that February will just be a dead run, but then I have to take another breath and realise I still need to run faster. That first week in March I will dissolve into a week of pure pleasure and indolence, so don't worry about me. Besides, I'm doing all kinds of exciting things. Among them: This Sunday I will be at Amber Polo's Wordshaping blog talking about why I write fantasy. Monday I will have a piece up at the Spectator Arts blog about Fall fans. I just volunteered to read Ogden Nash poems between the pieces of Saint-Saëns' "Le carnaval des animaux"on April 8th. Lunch out today and Rasputina in concert tonight! Did I mention Rome in just a couple of weeks? :-D Of course, it's Thursday and time for my column. My title was inspired by the National Midnight Star headline. Love that SCTV!

The Internet Will Kill You

By K.A. Laity

 

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation celebrates its 21st birthday, we have to accept the facts that our little baby the internet (AKA "the internets" or "a system of tubes") is all grown up and walking now – why, in fact it's a junior in college.

You'd think that all the stress and trouble of its feral childhood could be put behind us now. After all, your grandmother is on Facebook and your dad tweets for the local council and your mom has reached the alchemist level on Worlds of Warcraft by employing a fleet of poorly paid Chinese students who mine virtual gold in their spare time.

And yet we are no closer to normalcy. In a world where Justin Bieber is possible, anything can go wrong. We even have the experts throwing up their hands in despair or shamefacedly stubbing their toes in the dirt and muttered, "I just don’t know." The Tools for Change conference this week latched onto literate member of the Twitterati, Margaret Atwood, to talk about her experiences as an author in the digital age. 

Read the rest and share the link! http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/the-internet-will-kill-you.html#ixzz1EENneEu8

BitchBuzz: Technology and Temperance + Jane Quiet

My column today springs from my annoyance with paternalistic colleagues who keep giving people the impression that academics are stuffy know-it-alls who pontificate from their position of privilege. I realise I can also be a bit unreasonable about it: on President's Day a colleague in the midst of his "technology: bad" talk (thank goodness there was also a "technology: good" talk by the fabulous Kim Middleton) made several references to The Matrix which made me want to break something.

The Matrix?! This is your idea of technology: a twelve year old film? Made when almost NONE of the tech things we're talking about existed as more than an idea? Academics who would never have the chutzpah to offer public opinions on other disciplines have no trouble at all pontificating about things in popular culture that they have at most heard of--they've certainly never participated. It irritates me. But enough bile--I have things to do:

Does Tech Actually Distract from Real Life?

By K.A. Laity

We could all use a little time away from technology, right?

Colleagues of mine forwarded a link on Facebook today to a piece by William Major at the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Thoreau's Cellphone Experiment." In it Major tells of offering an extra credit project to his students: giving up their cell phones to him for five whole days, the better to reach a more "real" experience of life, unencumbered by the "distractions" of their palm-sized technology.

Setting aside the privileged and paternalistic tone of the piece for a moment and setting aside the dubiousness of Thoreau's withdrawal to the "wilderness" of Walden Pond (which did not keep him from frequent, almost daily visits to the village of Concord, or from getting female family members to feed him and do his laundry), the whole aim of this article misunderstands the role of technology in our lives...

Read the rest at BBHQ: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/does-social-media-actually-distract-from-real.html#ixzz1Bai2nins

In more pleasant news JANE QUIET! Have you been reading the prologue? Do you like Elena's new style? What amazing color, eh? Tomorrow the big re-launch: Jane Quiet 2.0 -- yes, there will be prizes!

It Begins

FORGOT! Happy 20th Anniversary, Boojums and happy birthday, Mr. Poe!

The semester, that is. Actually it began yesterday, but I teach Mondays and Wednesdays so I all I had to do was, well -- get ready to teach today. And deal with all the administrative things I had ignored over the break.

Allons-y!

I'm teaching the freshman medieval course, Writing for New Media and Masculinities & Medieval Film (probably for the last time for a while). I always know when it's starting, yet every time the term creeps upon me without me feeling prepared. So, no time to be witty today (assuming that is possible on other days) and before you even ask, Bertie -- no, I will not make my students stand on their desks.




If you need something to do, please consider voting for my novelette "High Plains Lazarus" in the Predators & Editors Best of 2010 poll over at Critters.

BitchBuzz: The Next Big Thing

My latest column:

Women are Key in Discovering the Next Big Thing

The latest innovation from iTunes launched this week. Ping was supposed to revolutionize the music experience. Reviews, however, were tepid. The "social network for music" as Apple promotion called it turned out to be less social than existing networks and not integrated with them, a rather serious miscalculation. It's possible they rushed the launch to coincide with the iPod re-launch and it will improve, but for the moment, the sizzle just ain't there.
Everybody's trying to find the next big thing (remember Google's Wave and Buzz? Nah, I didn't think so), but the virtual landscape is getting littered with the bones of a whole lot of misguided attempts to be "the next _______" when that's really not what we need.
It's a business kind of outlook (and how well has that served the world lately) that seeks to dislodge a successful product by creating another version of the same with NEW and IMPROVED written across the package.  It's Coke and Pepsi thinking.  While slow moving organizations decide how to cope with the digital revolution that's already here, most people are just looking for fun...

Read more: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/women-are-key-in-discovering-the-next-big-thing.html#ixzz0z3yTTQuJ

Insanely busy today but I will have some fun tonight that involves friends and drumming, so hurrah! The program for Albacon is coming together despite my lack of minions (where are my minions!), so a little less stress about that. I do have a piece of rather surprising and good news, but anon -- off to run errands including getting some food so I don't have to be embarrassed by my empty fridge.

Ada Lovelace Day: Sarah Goode

It's Ada Lovelace Day again: time to celebrate women in science and technology. Perhaps influenced by all the historical research going on around me, I wanted to find a woman at least as far back as the 19th century, so I decided to focus on Sarah E. Goode, who was not only an early inventor but one of the first African-American women to secure a patent. Although born a slave in 1850, after the war she went north and became an entrepreneur. While living in Chicago and running her own furniture store, she came up with an idea for the Cabinet Bed, a folding bed that doubled as a writing desk when not in use. Ingenious!





Goode submitted her idea and was granted a patent on July 14, 1885 (Patent #322,177, for a cabinet bed). There are some discrepancies in the records of the times -- was there more than one Sarah Goode? Did the details get mixed up between two different ones? It's difficult to be sure: but one of those Sarahs was the inventor of this inspiring mechanical piece that doubtless sold well in her store to all those city dwellers pressed for space.

Have you got a story about a woman in science and technology to share?

BitchBuzz: No Girls Allowed

Yeah, you may have already guessed -- or seen -- my BitchBuzz column for this week. It's up early, in fact I shot it off to my editor while I was [cough] not attending the faculty meeting. Hey, I had pressing news to cover! Considering the quick hits it got, I'm glad I did.

Hat tips to pals Brad Brooks, who told me about the Start Trek connection, and to Dan Shea, who gave me an awesome quote to steal on Facebook (hey, maybe it can go in your tenure file):

I'm sure they did a lot of testing, but I just can't believe there was no woman on the team or at least one in an important enough position to say, "No, no, hell no!" when it came to naming it the iPad.

Read the rest, as always, at BBHQ. I have meetings in the morning, so maybe I'll post this now. Having got my column done early, I did a little reading tonight. I have Chris Anderson's Free out from the library, recommended to me by several folks. I find myself nodding a lot at what he says. We're undergoing a fundamental shift in our culture -- our culture in the global sense. At times I get a glimpse of the answers about where it's going, but it's just out of the corner of my eye. Exciting times we live in -- difficult, confusing and changing at an incredible pace, but exciting all the same.

New Media and My Life

The big announcement today was Apple's new tablet computer. I suspect there were no women on the design team, or else it wouldn't have ended up with the name iPad (on a related note, a trending topic on Twitter: iTampon). I was teaching at the time of the announcement and joked with my students about how hard it was not to just pop open a window on the computer to see how the press conference was going. So one of them came up and the end and showed me the news story on his iPhone. Gotta love it.

I'm teaching the Writing for New Media course. We do a lot of our assignments on line, so if you want to follow along, bookmark our blog. I'm hoping to learn a lot from them about their interactions with new media. My focus has been on what they actually do and not on what they think they ought to do when in class. For example, one student asked about using Wikipedia. I have colleagues who ban any reference to Wikipedia, but let's be realistic: students are going to use it. Why not teach them how to use it thoughtfully? For example, examine the results at different times to see whether -- and how -- the entry changes, determine what sort of sources have been used to establish the information, and whether there are controversies made explicit in the entry.

In the end, it's not about the information: it's about having the intellectual tools to critically examine it.

BitchBuzz: Facebook Trains Us

My latest column for BitchBuzz is up. Sure, my greatest thrill is that I was able to work both Peter Cook and Groucho into the piece, but I am interested in the ways that we grow used to new technologies. Watching people cope with change is always instructive and I think the keepers of Facebook are getting smarter about the ways that they introduce change, because folks seldom like it. While I'm always concerned about the subtle machinations behind the façade, I hardly think the world of social media is as dire as some neo-Luddite academics think. Far from being the end of the world as we know it, I've found it does nothing but enhance my friendships and bring me new ones -- and besides, it makes feel bouncy bouncy. It's only a tool, after all -- it's how you wield it that matters.

The Next Big Thing

Perhaps -- it's big in Japan, anyway and may well be big here soon: text novels. Yep, that's right: a novel that's sent bit by bit to your phone or mobile device.

Charles Dickens, eat your heart out!

My pal, Saranna DeWylde, has a couple of novels begun there, and told me I really need to get on board with this. She's right, so I have started putting my serial The Mangrove Legacy up there. Even better, Dorchester Publishing is holding a contest between now and November so if you drop by, you can vote for my novel in the competition. I've listed it as Romance: Historical, but I added enough information to make sure people knew it had my surreal sense of humour, too. If they're expecting a serious gothic, I don't want them to be led astray.

Today I'm off to Shakespeare & Co for a behind the scenes tour and a matinee of Measure for Measure. Then it's off to Robert's to relax a little before I come back and yes, work some more.

Social Media Breakfast--Tech Valley

Yesterday morning, much too early, I headed downtown to the Capital Rep Theatre, host of that morning's Social Media Breakfast for the Tech Valley region. The lovely picture is from the CapRep stage: they're currently deep into Shear Madness. Great set, eh?

The featured speaker was Justin R. Levy, a PR/social media maven, who live-tweeted his own wedding. While his experiences were centered in business, there was a lot of useful info for everyone, including the most useful aspects of different social media -- e.g. how building relationships on Twitter is different from doing so on Facebook, but also how you need to use a mix of media not only to cast the widest net, but also to deal with glitches like the recent takedown of Twitter.

And yes, we're back to that sticky issue of branding, again. If you want to make the most of SEO, then you need to know what the search terms are that will lead to your virtual door. Once again I'm stymied by shoehorning my work into some kind of catch phrase. Perhaps one will come to me.

You can see a stream of the event (featuring the back of my head). The lovely Amy Mengel was our hostess and organizer (who's so on the ball she tweeted to tell me there was tea along with the coffee and bagels when I complained on Twitter that there was no tea). While I hold to Wilde's edict about breakfast and brilliance, it was worth getting up early to be there.

Housekeeping

I moved the serial blog, The Mangrove Legacy, to the "new" Blogger format, which is actually no longer new, in the hopes that it would make it easier to add things like "tweet this!" links and so forth. Hasn't worked out that way, so I'm hesitant shift this blog over because of course there will be so much in the sidebars, etc. to restore. But I do need to make some changes to the sidebar on this blog, but I've been dragging my feet.

I cannot convey to you how much I hate tedious typing and html-ing. Not to mention wasting time on this when I have a million and one things to do this month because I have goofed off most of the summer -- yes, I brought this on myself, but it doesn't make it any easier to get it all done. For the umpteenth time I wonder why I do not have a staff of about ten to do these things for me -- or five! I'd settle for five.

In the meantime (yes, yes, will get the final UK posts up this week) check out the latest adventures of Lizzie and Alice over at the serial. You will be entertained and gently amused. Tell me what you think of the new layout (if it looks any different to you at all).

Image via Email a Joke.

BitchBuzz: Twitter as Performance

My latest piece for BitchBuzz which grew out of my presentation at the Great Writing Conference in Wales last month as well as my grad class, Literature, Performance and Visual Narrative. Nice Yoko picture to accompany it!

The Thing about Vampires

Teaching is all about planning + improvisation. You have to plan well and provide a structure, but it's also important to roll with the vagaries of the unexpected. Today was a case for this kind of flexibility. After talking about the ambiguity that signaled the 1980s shift in horror films, we were all primed to see John Carpenter's 1982 movie The Thing. It's a heady mix of gender politics and claustrophobic masculinity and rather good monster effects for its time.

However, the disc refused to play in the dvd player or in the computer. We even tried one of the students' laptops. No go. Argh. So much for my carefully orchestrated preamble. Fortunately, I do bring a handful of other films to show brief clips from to illustrate various points (we had already watched the opening minutes of the stylish vamp classic The Hunger with Bauhaus, Deneuve, Bowie and Ann Magnuson). The students suggested watching that film instead (in part because of our now running joke about David Bowie) but it's a video transfer and stutters a lot, so I decided to go with Near Dark, which is an entertaining film with some interesting developments, but not quite on track with our trajectory.

I suppose it's just as well as we were giving short shrift to vamps over all (on the whole I'm not a big fan of vampire films) but it irks, of course. But that's the teaching life. We had a good discussion and they'll surely have more to post on-line tonight, so I ought to be sanguine.

Branding: Popular Culture and New Media

I'll blog later about today's class (featuring Texas Chainsaw Massacre and feminist film critique), but for the moment (and that's about all I have) I want to get back to the difficult task of "branding" as we have come to call it. While I'm still resisting the labeling, I am trying to be more conscious of where I might have readers who don't know me yet but might like to do so.

One of my other areas of interest is popular culture; I've been a member of the Popular Culture Association since 1995 and national area chair for Medieval Popular Culture for about five years now. In particular I have an interest in "medievalism" or how popular culture adapts, adopts and re-imagines the medieval, which includes everything from film and television to video games, websites and of course, re-enactments and medieval/renaissance faires.

But I'm also increasingly preoccupied with New Media, particularly its impact on my teaching life. I worry about the lack of engagement with New Media in our curriculum, and with my colleagues Kim Middleton, Catherine Cavanaugh and Fred Antico, helped derive a new minor in Film and New Media Studies. It's a start, but there's so much more to be done. While Twitter, Facebook and so on occupy an important part of the popular media, the impact on our working lives hasn't yet been well articulated -- and I think it needs to be.

But now I have to get back to my class prep, so I'll leave you with a question: what's the impact of New Media on your life?

BitchBuzz: 21st C Women's Studies

Check out my latest piece for BitchBuzz where I try to focus on the duties I'll be taking on as coordinator of the Women's and Gender Studies program at my college. It's going to be a challenge to revitalise the program as we had an off-year last year for a variety of reasons. My thought is to shift focus to targeted topics and events that invite participation from a wide variety of folks: students, staff and faculty as well as the wider community. I also hope to forge closer relationships with like-minded groups on campus.

Suggestions welcome!

Ada Lovelace Day

"I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

— Suw Charman-Anderson

Thus Ada Lovelace Day was born. I learned about this from a story in The Guardian (of course). While there are organizations to help bring together women in technology, like Women in Technology and the Anita Borg Institute (don't you want to join the Borg?), the profile of women in technology remains low and girls are still not encouraged to follow technological careers.

The Borg institute offers "Women of Vision" awards to help address this imbalance. One of the recipients of this year's awards is Professor Jan Cuny of the National Science Foundation, who's doing work on recruiting and retaining women in the field of computer science and engineering. Not surprisingly, the study includes the following recognitions:

There is strong evidence, for example, that women, even though they perform at the same levels, have less confidence in their abilities and individual accomplishments than men [2][17][36][39][43]. Women are often less aggressive than male students in promoting themselves, attempting new or challenging activities, and pursuing awards or fellowships. There is evidence that females come to computing as only one interest among many, and are thus less single-minded than their male counterparts [27]. Often women report feeling “out of place” in the male-dominated, hacker culture [3][22][28]. In light of such differences, some of our recommendations are gender-specific. Most, however, are not. The adoption of our recommendations would improve the educational environment for all students.

I think a lot of women in academia experience this (and probably a lot of women not in academia, too), although I imagine it must be exacerbated in fields that remain overwhelmingly male. Wonderful to know that the issues are being articulated and addressed -- and that they are likely to improve the lot of all students.

Hurrah for Jan and all women in technology!