Webb’s Media

I was paid a very nice compliment yesterday, which has caused extensive amounts of self-absorbed reflection. The compliment itself, was a kind of catalyst, some language-action, which reminded me of other simple, seconds-long moments that stuck in my head and have impacted what I do. I use Habermas’ term of language-action because I think that people often forget that saying something can be a forceful act and influence the action of others. In fact, where this idea of language action works best is in these types of communication, because there is a shared goal and language is being used transparently [which is not always the objective of communicative exchanges].

Some that come to mind immediately that influenced a decision I made:
You write well. You should consider majoring in English. (undergrad professor)
You want to teach because that’s all you know. You’ve never tried a job outside of school. Do something useful…(Yeah, thanks dad! That worked out great.)
You should get a Phd (graduate professor)

Some that come to mind as making me pause and think differently:
If you want to change a community, #1- you have to be part of that community and #2- you have to be prepared to give up your job frequently because if you’re doing your job right, you will be preparing people to replace you (professor)
People need art and writing [in the face of increasing emphasis on science and technology] more now than ever (professor)
If we see people as instrumental and only as serving a function (salesperson, client, etc), we dehumanize and don’t see each other as people (professor)

What small exchange of words changed the direction of your life or the way you thought about something?

So it’s 1:38 am and I get an email, from my boyfriend who is at an airport in Italy somewhere (I know where, but it’s a secret) and can access email, but not messenger. And the entire time he’s been gone, which is 6 weeks now has been a communication nightmare. His school has no internet access. There is an internet café in town, so any kind of online time is something like 5 euros per hour. He can call out from the café for 15 euro-cents a minute, but the café can’t receive calls (It would be too easy if I could see him online, know that he’s free to talk and just call then). And the last part of this logistical nightmare is that the hotel where there are about 60 students staying, a large percentage of which are 20-year-old girls, there is one phone on which to receive incoming calls. And I lied. There’s one more thing. It’s 6 hours ahead in Italy…once classes and dinner are done for him, it’s around 10 pm. And that makes it 4 pm on the East Coast. And the odds of my being home between 4 and 6 pm while doing a dissertation that requires collecting data at an afterschool program…And why do I have to be at home? Because the only way I can afford to call him is via my computer (plus it would awkward to observe people working while gabbing on the phone).(*&#(#&)#@)#)((#@)(#&$(*#(&$#& #$%#%#$
Those symbols are not cursing. My angry thoughts just can’t be translated into recognizable language at the moment. I feel like Clark Griswald in Christmas Vacation where he snaps and goes into a raging tirade, which concludes with, “Holy Shit! Where’s the Tylenol.”

Some interesting blog-orabilia in the 2005 Bloggies. (It sounds like a weird new cereal brand. Maybe little marshmellow froggies swimming around in a bowl of milk? Help, we’re water-blogged…)

With the same topic of blogging in mind, a list of how to blog “rules.” Actually it’s more like a manifesto. It’s kind of inspiring, but it is built around the idea of an anonymous audience (see #5) . And the audience is a critical aspect of writing, no matter what the medium. So if you are fostering a medium of pure self-expression, really with no thought for your audience, his ideas are great. However, it is far more challenging to express yourself knowing that people you might know will read it…and that they will comment and get a glimpse of what you are thinking about while you’re writing your blog instead of phoning them. And you can comment to their comments instead of emailing them. That sounds a lot healthier and more direct to me.

And unrelatedly, what has happened to capitalization? I am guilty too, of lazily avoiding capitals in casual correspondence, but it’s a little like taking off your shoes and propping them up on someone’s coffee table. Maybe you can do that with close friends and family, but if you go on spreading all your bizness in lowercase, people are going to start blabbing about your loose grammar mores…

So that discussion about the repercussions of blogging got me thinking. I think it is a dilemma of the “post-modern” condition. We don’t just theorize that there can be multiple realities and truths, we create multiple faces for the world. Instead of honoring the “Renaissance (wo)man,” academia in particular emphasizes the “specialist.” The more focused and specialized the message you create, the more “professional” you become. As we head towards the status of professional, we deal with the perceptions of what others view as suitable for people in our profession.

But we can make a choice. And I can say…this is my space and my audience is people interested in what I have to say…whether it’s mundane details of my day or brilliant groundbreaking academic thought…probably mostly somewhere in between. But the whole discussion has given me a good idea about how to organize this blog differently…which I’m sure I’ll get to anyday now since I have nothing better to do these days…just this silly ‘ole dissertation research…

So obviously I can’t go to Ireland in April, but I liked the description of this conference on Visual Literacy. Two days. No concurrent sessions. Everyone engaged in the same discussion. Is this academic fiction…?

Yeah! I feel like this is a real conversation now. I do wonder if Cognitive Dissonance knows that we’re on the same AECT committee to which I’ve contributed nothing because I can’t figure out how to add to a wiki or how to set up an aggregator and I’m too ashamed to have someone walk me through step by step. I should add a new catergory called “Technology Deficiency Confessions.”

I agree that blogging is a way of constructing social space, but it’s a tricky social space. While I do want to be heard, I have to at the same time remember who our audience is. And the context of the discussion. As I found early on with my blog, using writing I had prepared for one audience did not translate well to the disconnected blog entry I posted. Anyone reading the blog hadn’t participated in the discussion leading to the words in the entry, an important reminder of the importance of context to communication.

I also am in a precarious situation. Most bloggers hope that “anyone” will listen. However, if you know who the anyone is, and it’s family, the blog may take a different shape than originally intended. And once those nasty spammers learned how to infest the previous version of wordpress, commerical-captitalism-slash-online-addiction stifled the would-be social space of my blog.

I created this blog to discuss dissertation ideas and reflections, but actually I think my dissertation journaling needs to be more private. I wanted to reflect on readings, which I have to some extent, but not as much as I’d like. At this point my categories do not seem adequate for the topics I am posting about because I started out with a different objective.

With a blog, I want a voice, but I am afraid of the repercussions of that voice. I’ve considered starting another blog to handle a different scope of reflections, but I barely have time to post on this one blog. I know that a lot of bloggers have multiple blogs to compartmentalize their various interests to a variety of specialized audiences….somewhat of a post-modern solution to the problem…

This weekend while visiting my grandparents, TK & I got into a heated discussion about morality and law. The crux of the disagreement, TK asserted that all human behavior and morality is rooted in innate biological function…and humans thus are no different from other animals in that they act purely in self-interest. If I do something nice for someone, I am doing it purely because I expect or hope for someone else to do something for me. The strong will survive in this way of thinking, the weak will be weeded out. [What other way of thinking should I expect from someone with a dog named Darwin?]

I have no expectation for a resolution to this discussion. This is an issue of what someone believes, sometimes there’s no changing that. However, I have to believe that human beings do things for other reasons besides self-interest. It’s too reductionist to say that all motivations are the same and all humans are motivated by the same function. Self-interest, particularly in the form of individualism is a western construct that at its face value seems to complement Darwin’s theories (and would it be otherwise—since those in power have had the ability to choose and laud the “past” of their choosing?) In fact, human endeavor and our ideas of favorable human qualities are intertwined with attempting to surmount biology and demonstrate “civility.” Furthermore, dividing human behavior into the categories of “good” versus “evil,” an age old, Western dichotomy, we could deconstruct these two to be codifications of “interest of common good” versus “self-interest.” In other words, we as humans have for thousands of years been trying to overcome our animal instincts. TK, I think would say that this means we are motivated by self-interest. I say that instead, humans are constantly motivated by something beyond our self-interest.

To say that someone is acting in self-interest also implies forethought. Animals react in self-interest. Humans plan and communicate in ways that are inexplicable with only a behavioristic stimulus-response model of learning. And most importantly, humans can feel—empathy, compassion. How do we know that people feel? They can communicate what they are feeling. How do we know that humans are thinking and reasoning? Again, language is the most clever of our technologies to represent our changing thoughts.

And what do we make of examples where people act in ways that are incongruous with self-interest? For example, someone with a drug addiction may start—i don’t know, let’s say smoking for selfish reasons, even when it is clearly not in their self-interest.

When anyone says that there is one answer for everything, it oversimplifies the complexity of human society, communication, and activity. If humans were so simple to understand, we could clone humans or build AI that replicates human cognition. I guess I just feel we need to analyze and expand the factors that influence human behavior. While I acknowledge that self-interest, selfishness, self-preservation (all 3 of these being very different!!!) may inherently guide our actions, but a framework for morality in the face of these attempts to guide people in transcending our instincts.