Category: Personal

Academics and Writers

I have to admit it: I am a bit perturbed, or shaken, when I encounter Charles Stross, one of the more interesting SF writers at work today, writing the following:

We have literary academics studying us (and as a jobbing writer, I can tell you there are few things as terrifying as discovering that some poor bastard’s dissertation depends on a misinterpretation of one of your books).

Now, fortunately I am far past the dissertation stage; but as a “literary academic” who studies SF, and who writes about it both here and in my more formal acaemic writing, I am eternally worried about precisely this, even though (or more to the point, precisely because) when I write about books I admire, or books that make me feel something or understand something I didn’t feel or understand before, — and I usually do only write about books I like, letting the ones I don’t be passed over in silence — I make no pretense of describing them accurately, as they are — but rather use them (or appropriate them) to come to some understanding for myself, which means that the author might just as well be upset by my (admitted) misinterpretation, as he/she might be pleased by the fact that I liked their book.

I have to admit it: I am a bit perturbed, or shaken, when I encounter Charles Stross, one of the more interesting SF writers at work today, writing the following:

We have literary academics studying us (and as a jobbing writer, I can tell you there are few things as terrifying as discovering that some poor bastard’s dissertation depends on a misinterpretation of one of your books).

Now, fortunately I am far past the dissertation stage; but as a “literary academic” who studies SF, and who writes about it both here and in my more formal acaemic writing, I am eternally worried about precisely this, even though (or more to the point, precisely because) when I write about books I admire, or books that make me feel something or understand something I didn’t feel or understand before, — and I usually do only write about books I like, letting the ones I don’t be passed over in silence — I make no pretense of describing them accurately, as they are — but rather use them (or appropriate them) to come to some understanding for myself, which means that the author might just as well be upset by my (admitted) misinterpretation, as he/she might be pleased by the fact that I liked their book.

Hyperpolis

I will be in New York later this week to participate in the Hyperpolis conference on “Really Useful Media.” I’m especially happy to be on a panel together with three people whose work I greatly admire: Jodi Dean, McKenzie Wark, and Geert Lovink.

I will be in New York later this week to participate in the Hyperpolis conference on “Really Useful Media.” I’m especially happy to be on a panel together with three people whose work I greatly admire: Jodi Dean, McKenzie Wark, and Geert Lovink.

Elizabeth Grosz

The first DeRoy Lecture of the 2006-2007 academic year is by noted feminist theorist and scholar Elizabeth Grosz. The talk’s title is “Vibrations,” and it is about Deleuze and music.

The talk takes place Friday, September 29, in the English Department Seminar Room, room 10302, 5057 Woodward, Wayne State University, Detroit.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Students’ Association of Graduates in English.

The first DeRoy Lecture of the 2006-2007 academic year is by noted feminist theorist and scholar Elizabeth Grosz. The talk’s title is “Vibrations,” and it is about Deleuze and music.

The talk takes place Friday, September 29, in the English Department Seminar Room, room 10302, 5057 Woodward, Wayne State University, Detroit.

The talk is co-sponsored by the Students’ Association of Graduates in English.

Software and Hardware

Now that Apple has completed migrating its laptops to Intel chips, I really want to get a new one; I really want to replace my aging (in computer-age terms, i.e. it is 2 1/2 years old) 12″ PowerBook with a new 13″ MacBook… Except for one thing. My PowerBook weighs 4.3 lbs, which is way too heavy. The new MacBook — the lightest and most compact Mac laptop model, just announced — weighs 5.2 lbs, it is almost a full pound heavier. If I got one, and took it around with me, it would break my back! I really want Apple to introduce a new, lightweight subnotebook, 3 lbs or less, something that I could carry about with me everywhere.

The laptop — like the Treo (phone/PDA), the iPod, and the digital camera; or for that matter, like my eyeglasses — is really part of my body.These are all prostheses that augment my ability to act in and with the world, to affect and be affected, as Spinoza would say, they are parts of my distributed cognitive (and affective) network, as Andy Clark would say. So these ergonomic considerations are really important; they are equally as important as, and should indeed be considered a part of, the design aesthetics that Steve Jobs so (justifiably, in other respects) vaunts himself on being concerned with. Why can’t Apple come out with something comparable to the 1.9 lb Sony Vaio, which is a beautiful and reasonably high-powered machine (even if not quite as beautiful as Apple’s laptops) machine, whose only major defect is that it runs Windows instead of the Mac OS?

Since I am harping on my techno commodity fetish obsessions — all I want to do is buy! buy! buy!, but the product has to be just right, and that just-rightness includes a brand or corporate identification — let me ask an open question about software. I am looking for some sort of Mac OS program that I could use as a sort of database of writing fragments. That is to say, a program that just connects short notes I write, snippets of questions or half-formed paragraphs, i.e. text fragments from a few lines to a few paragraphs in length, together with a bunch of web and article citations on various subjects — all this to collect material that I could use as raw material for later or more concerted writing.

I already have a fine program, Yojimbo, that I use to collect miscellaneous web snippets, texts, images, links, and so on (sometimes I just keep the urls for pages I have found interesting; other times I keep the entire contents of the web page). But here I am looking for something different, something that I would use mostly for text fragments I write myself. So being able to handle formats other than plain text wouldn’t be that important. (As long as I can hyperlink to bibliography sources, to images, etc., I wouldn’t need them in the database itself). I need something that is not too hierarchically organized (I cannot group these fragments into categories and subcategories, which is why certain programs I’ve tried, like Circus Ponies Notebook, aren’t quite right for me), but that allows for powerful searching. I’d like to be able to associate each fragment or entry with an unlimited number of metadata tags, and be able to search both by those and by full text content. It would be even better if the program could interpret LaTeX and BibTeX, since most of my entries would be in this format

Has anyone reading this tried either DevonThink or TAO, and are either of these along the lines of what I am looking for? Or can anyone recommend another program, that would be more suitable for my needs? Thanks…

Now that Apple has completed migrating its laptops to Intel chips, I really want to get a new one; I really want to replace my aging (in computer-age terms, i.e. it is 2 1/2 years old) 12″ PowerBook with a new 13″ MacBook… Except for one thing. My PowerBook weighs 4.3 lbs, which is way too heavy. The new MacBook — the lightest and most compact Mac laptop model, just announced — weighs 5.2 lbs, it is almost a full pound heavier. If I got one, and took it around with me, it would break my back! I really want Apple to introduce a new, lightweight subnotebook, 3 lbs or less, something that I could carry about with me everywhere.

The laptop — like the Treo (phone/PDA), the iPod, and the digital camera; or for that matter, like my eyeglasses — is really part of my body.These are all prostheses that augment my ability to act in and with the world, to affect and be affected, as Spinoza would say, they are parts of my distributed cognitive (and affective) network, as Andy Clark would say. So these ergonomic considerations are really important; they are equally as important as, and should indeed be considered a part of, the design aesthetics that Steve Jobs so (justifiably, in other respects) vaunts himself on being concerned with. Why can’t Apple come out with something comparable to the 1.9 lb Sony Vaio, which is a beautiful and reasonably high-powered machine (even if not quite as beautiful as Apple’s laptops), whose only major defect is that it runs Windows instead of the Mac OS?

Since I am harping on my techno commodity fetish obsessions — all I want to do is buy! buy! buy!, but the product has to be just right, and that just-rightness includes a brand or corporate identification — let me ask an open question about software. I am looking for some sort of Mac OS program that I could use as a sort of database of writing fragments. That is to say, a program that just connects short notes I write, snippets of questions or half-formed paragraphs, i.e. text fragments from a few lines to a few paragraphs in length, together with a bunch of web and article citations on various subjects — all this to collect material that I could use as raw material for later or more concerted writing.

I already have a fine program, Yojimbo, that I use to collect miscellaneous web snippets, texts, images, links, and so on (sometimes I just keep the urls for pages I have found interesting; other times I keep the entire contents of the web page). But here I am looking for something different, something that I would use mostly for text fragments I write myself. So being able to handle formats other than plain text wouldn’t be that important. (As long as I can hyperlink to bibliography sources, to images, etc., I wouldn’t need them in the database itself). I need something that is not too hierarchically organized (I cannot group these fragments into categories and subcategories, which is why certain programs I’ve tried, like Circus Ponies Notebook, aren’t quite right for me), but that allows for powerful searching. I’d like to be able to associate each fragment or entry with an unlimited number of metadata tags, and be able to search both by those and by full text content. It would be even better if the program could interpret LaTeX and BibTeX, since most of my entries would be in this format

Has anyone reading this tried either DevonThink or TAO, and are either of these along the lines of what I am looking for? Or can anyone recommend another program, that would be more suitable for my needs? Thanks…

Davide Grassi

DemoKino

The next event in the DeRoy Lecture series is an appearance by the Slovenian artist Davide Grassi, presenting his “anti-entertainment interactive movie,” DEMO-KINO: VIRTUAL BIOPOLITICAL AGORA. (More information available here).

DemoKino is a virtual parliament that through topical film parables provides the voters (participants) with the opportunity to decide on issues that are, paradoxically, becoming the essence of modern politics: the questions of life. The project questions not only the utopia of contemporary virtual forum that is supposed to open ways for a more direct and influential participation but also points out a much deeper problem of modern democracy (virtual as well). With its reduced narrativeness – the story is built on the ‘pro and contra’ inner dialogues of the protagonist who is led around his home in a parliamentary kind of way by the ‘voters,’ based on their decisions – Demokino shows how these ethical dilemmas of modern life suddenly become the core of our political participation. When the issue of life enters the political arena and modern politics becomes biopolitics the democratic decision reaches an impasse: in the political arena laws are being debated on issues that can actually tolerate no decisions and any kind of majority rule is problematic in itself, any political regulation a publicly legitimated act of violence. Demokino is a virtual parliament that clearly displays how politics comes before law. Law is just a utopic and redundant technical procedure to cover the political essence.

Partrich Auditorium
Wayne State Law School
471 W. Palmer St.
Detroit, Michigan
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 at 3:00 pm.

Mark Amerika lecture

I’m happy to announce the next event in the DeRoy Lecture Series at Wayne State University:

Mark Amerika
discussion of recent work
March 3, 2006
3:00 PM
Room 10302
5057 Woodward
Detroit.

I’m happy to announce the next event in the DeRoy Lecture Series at Wayne State University:

Mark Amerika
discussion of recent work
March 3, 2006
3:00 PM
Room 10302
5057 Woodward
Detroit.

Comment on comments

I’ve turned comments back on, for the time being. I want to see if the new anti-spam protections now available in WordPress 2 (and especially the Akismet plugin) will preserve me from being absolutely overwhelmed with comment and trackback spam as I was before.

I’ve turned comments back on, for the time being. I want to see if the new anti-spam protections now available in WordPress 2 (and especially the Akismet plugin) will preserve me from being absolutely overwhelmed with comment and trackback spam as I was before.