Text Sushi by Alf Rehn

“Arse Electronica”, a conference about pornography and technological innovation, provokes a series of interesting questions about how we view innovation. Regardless of the fact that we know more than we might be prepared to admit about innovation, we often still treat it as a rather sterile thing. That our baser instincts, or interest in sex, might generate innovations of a kind that are less wholesome and family-friendly than a new mobile phone, yet more innovative, is something we’d rather ignore. A quote from the conference website:

The porno effect accompanies every new technological development. Immediately after producing his famous bible, Gutenberg used his press to print erotica. Photography was utilized just as quickly. In 1874 the London police discovered 130,000 pornographic photos in the course of a single house search. The introduction of cinematic technology also confirmed the close relationship between pornography and technological innovation: in 1896 a pornographic film was shown publicly for the first time, two years after the premiere of the first films of any interest to the general public. Since then, more pornographic films than nonpornographic films have been produced. That in 1977 the first video cassettes to appear on the market featured pornographic content should come as no surprise. The development of the camcorder and the instamatic camera made it possible for anyone so inclined to produce porno in privacy at home. The fact that the first affordable Polaroid model was named “The Swinger” seems to indicate that the industry was well aware of this possible use.

How much of truly interesting innovation is lost to us because we don’t want to acknowledge it?
How many creative impulses are we denying ourselves with our “morality-blinders”?
Have you looked at something that offends you today?

I like Stanley Fish, but I love seeing him trashed in Slate.

So I trawl through some stuff I linked to read later, and checked out this fascinating little program to quantify your academic life. My god, it trawls the net (well, Google Scholar), grabs what it can, and turns you into a series of figures. No longer do we need to read anything, we can just rate people on their stats! All kinds of goodness here, like Hirsch’s h-index and related parameters, Egghe’s g-index not to mention that old party-trick, the age-weighted citation rate.

It is a little scary, really. It assumes that things like citation defines research, not their originality or even their strive to go against what is commonly accepted. In fact, it quantifies dogmatism and naturalizes the same.

Leafing through BusinessWeek I was prompted to think about this whole talent development/Brand You/portfolio living/slashies-thing. Once upon a time it was OK just to do your “thang”. Now, in order to be noticed/upwardly mobile, one needs to put together a collection, do several things. An academic who just studies this one thing is nothing. You have to publish on several topics, write fun stuff in the magazines, arrange workshops, do a bit of media, work in editorial hell and so on.

I’m not complaining, really, as I have the kind of attention deficit disorder that makes me do this out of a sheer neurological impetus, but I’m wondering if we’re schooling people in the right way. How do you learn to put together a portfolio? How do you learn how to mix a career?

Listening to:
Obviously 5 Believers from the album “Blonde On Blonde (Disc 2)” by Bob Dylan
&
Three Women Blues from the album “The Classic Years - 1927 - 1931 - Atlanta” by Blind Willie McTell

I’ve erased Microsoft Office from my computer. With the new version of iWork ‘08, who needs the bug-infested crap M$ puts out? Basically, if you work with M$-stuff, you’ll get fucked. And as Bill Gates is not paying me anything, I see no reason to use the poor excuse of software put out by his cohorts. And let me not even get started on people who actually (blecchh) “use” Windows (like you could use Windows…).

Just submitted a little sumthin’ sumthin’ I’ve been writing with Marcus Lindahl. Realized I have five or six articles in the review process. Good thing, I guess (some of my esteemed colleagues haven’t published as many in their careers), but sometimes it does make me feel rather depressed. We write these things, send them in, see them published, get a little kudos and maybe a reference here and there. Still one wonders, is this what research is? More and more it feels like the things I do out there, talking to companies, writing “softer” stuff and so on are infinitively more pleasurable. Who’d a thunk it, an old theory-head like myself becoming fundamentally pragmatic. May have to call the hardcore theory-monger Damian O’Doherty to set me straight (or crooked) again.

Just last night I was asked to write a chapter for a forthcoming book on philosophy and a specific phenomenon in popular culture, which was very nice. The truly amazing thing was the instructions for authors, a document written for the entire series. Now, I’ve written for a bunch of books, and I’ve seen a lot of these instructions. What made this different was the fact that instead of a stilted list of do’s and don’ts, this was highly intelligent and filled to the brim with smart observations regarding academic writing. Sometimes the world still manages to impress me. Just a short quote from it (note, this is remark 14 of part three (there are six parts, all with their individually numbered remarks)):

14. Begin in the middle!
Why do so many movies and popular short stories begin at one point in time, zoom back to an earlier point, then relate the events that happened in between? It’s to get you hooked. If the story were told chronologically, you might have to sit through a lot of not-so-interesting preparatory material before reaching a really fascinating bit, and by that time you would have lost interest. It works better to plunge into the middle, and then recount what happened earlier.
It’s just the same with writing nonfiction. Begin your chapter with something exceptionally interesting to the reader. Perhaps this will be an item that, if you gave a purely systematic exposition of your ideas, would occur halfway through your chapter, or near the end. Still, you should open with it.
Ideally, your job should be to guarantee that if someone reads your first sentence, they cannot possibly stop themselves reading the second, and then the third, and so on. That’s something few writers can come close to (Mencken could do it). But at least, use your first paragraph to wave something under your readers’ noses that will get them salivating.

Brilliant advice.

To be mentioned in the Op-Ed column of Nya Åland (a paper published on the Åland Islands) may not be world-class fame, but it is pretty important to some.