Holiday drinks

I just tried a new, interactive way of learning how to blend drinks, with the classic Tetris feel to it. Go here and choose Absolut holiday mix off.
With my background as a waitress and bartender, I'm quite disappointed that I didn't score any higher.

"To blog" deciphered

I had a pleasant surprise when opening my e-mail inbox this morning. Being a linguistic freak, I subscribe to a newsletter about Swedish idioms and words and the ethymology behind them. Today's word was "to blog", which surprised me a great deal, as the words are usually a bit old fashioned or rarely used. But perhaps "To blog" files under this category, rarely used, according to the one who compiles the list... ;)

I was glad to see though that the blogger is defined as someone who writes "some sort of journal at a website." and not merely as a diarist. Furthermore, the subscriber to this list is told that "One can see the journal as a middle way between a diary and a column in a newspaper, often with comments about current topics. Thus, the blogger is often a columnist on the net."

The ethymology parts states that the verb "to blog" derives from "blog", coined by Peter Merholz in 1999. The word weblog is somewhat older, as is the phenomenon of writing a diary on the net. Below is the complete text in Swedish, also found here.

Blogga

Den som bloggar skriver ett slags journal på sin
webbplats. Man kan se den som ett mellanting mellan en
dagbok och en kolumn i en dagstidning. Ofta med
kommentarer om dagsaktuella händelser. Bloggaren är
alltså ofta en kåsör på nätet. Det nya verbet blogga är
bildat av ordet blogg, själva webbjournalen. Ursprunget
är det engelska blog, en kortform av weblog som myntades
av Peter Merholz 1999 när han lekte med ordet på sin
webbplats. Blog spreds sedan snabbt, och blev populärt
genom tjänsten Blogger som startade strax därpå. Weblog
har ytterligare några år på nacken, liksom själva
fenomenet att skriva dagbok på nätet.

Weak signal

Finnish docent in Future research Mika Mannermaa has characterized our society as a "John Wayne-society". John Wayne, like the ordinary citizens of today, was outstanding at what he did and the prize tag of his expertice wasn't cheap. Anyhows, he's got a new book out, called "Out of Weak Signals, a Strong Future". Apparently, he feels that we're all surrounded by these weak signals, i.e. an idea or trend that will affect what business we do,and how. This trend is usually hard to perceive and is spotted by experts in the field.

There's an idea that I come across more and more often and perhaps that could be seen as a weak signal. The prediction is that the expert will be replaced by a generalist who knows a little bit of everything, instead of knowing everything in one tiny area. The idea is that people who have a broad perspective and a general knowledge of many things will do a lot better in life than experts concentrating on only one thing. (One reference in Swedish here.)

London calling

I'm off to London in a couple of hours. As I've never set foot in this metropolis before, I've read The Londonist-blog a couple of weeks now in order to get to know the city. The barometer of how well I know a city is how I manage the metro. By the time my return ticket expires, I've almost always gotten the hang of it, but according to Rob, I'd better not get my hopes up here.

Laughter therapy

I attended a laughter therapy course today. I learned a new word to avoid, Karoshi, and how to get high on laughter. The course didn't really give me much though, perhaps because I already know about the endorphines, the body's own drog etc. Or that I'm a person who laughs a lot anyway. But I do admit that the exercises to get us to laugh were quite stress releaving: "Pretend you're a male dog who marks his territory by peeing on it. Go out there and pee on each other."!

Google goes scholar

Google Scholar, the new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers, is up and running now. Available here. (Source: Air-list)

film festival online

The Stockholm International Film Festival takes off today and so does its ifestival - one of the first film festivals on the internet. Internet users can watch 10 international short films and vote for their favorite.

Swiss sociologist Rico Grünenfelder participates with Pico takes off, definitely worth watching!

Long awaited, much appreciated!

The snow's finally here!

Haluatko filmitestaajaksi?

Since about 33 % of my visitors are Finnish, I'll take the opportunity to market the media lab that I'm working at, iDTV Lab, and the chance of becoming a movie tester. You get to see new movies before they hit the theatres for free, and the chance to actually have a say in the process. If you loathe the ending of the movie, there's a chance that it'll be redone. For more info and to sign up, go here.

If you're a media reseacher or PhD-student for instance, looking for a cool opportunity to test interactivity, usability or user interface, or if you have a movie or tv-programme in your drawer and want to know what the big audience will say about it, go here (pdf), or here.

Deviant art

One of my favorite photographers, Esa Wendelin, has a great forum here. Go get blown away.

Seminar on media cooperation

There's a seminar at my university today that I'll attend. I'm especially looking forward to hearing Jonas Löwgren, associate professor of human-computer interaction in Malmö, Sweden talk about media cooperation. The seminar is taking place 12.30-16.15 (Finnish local time) and is streamed here.

Blogging apathy

My blog hasn't been much updated lately. There are three primary reasons for this. Firstly, my project to get connected to the net in my appartment keeps on failing. I signed up for a ADSL-connection but the installation queue is 8 weeks.

So, I figured I'd get myself a WLAN-card for surfing meanwhile standing in line, and I did, but the connection was too fable. When I didn't get it to work properly even out on the balcony, I realized that I'll have to live without the net at home for a couple of weeks. The blog posts I have written were born at the office but I've been so busy at work that I truly have not had one minute to spare. And as my partner lives 350 kilometers away from me, when we finally meet in the weekends, other things are on my mind than browsing through the net for interesting papers and thoughts to blog about. Lack of access to and time spent on the net is thus one reason for letting down my dear readers.

The second reason is an identity crisis. Since I'm not primarily a PhD-student anymore, but a media researcher with a paycheck dropping down once a month (which is rare for PhD-students here), I've been thinking about what to do with my blog. Should I go on writing about interesting papers, academia-related issues, even though I don't have as much time to follow these matters? Or, should I broaden the perspectives and blog news, media matters and research in general or make it a more mobile one, for instance blog when I go places?

But the most significant one is the fact that my mother is very ill. She suffers from a, most likely, severe disease that no one of us saw coming. It hit us like a bolt from the blue. Therefore, I've spent many hours with her and my family. While trying to cope with the chock, I played with the thought of blogging my feelings. I still don't think it's such a bad idea to blog one's way through sorrow and the struggle against a fatal disease, but I decided not to until we know for sure all the facts about her condition. I want to have a label on the matter before blogging about it. Perhaps that's just a silly desire of having control but that's how I feel.

Mobility and election

Yesterday's local government election felt strange. I voted in advance and at that time, I was registred in the municipality where I was brought up. I knew some of the candidates and I was somewhat excited about it. But when the results came in, I was most interested in seeing who got elected in the city I've lived and worked in the last six, seven years. But none of these will decide on my future, but yet another crowd of delegates in the town I live and am registered in nowadays. And I don't have a clue who they are! Mobility is difficult sometimes...

About the outcome: voting percentage in the whole nation was 58.6, compared with 55,9 % four years ago. And yes, my candidate got elected! Image, a young, dedicated women amongst the old buffers in the local government council room. Great!

(Updates on the election here, only in Swedish and Finnish though)

Contribute a verse

A few days ago, I promoted the movie “Dead Poets Society” from a long runner in the book shelf to Friday night entertainer. A feel good movie, where one line in particular caught my attention. The English teacher, played by Robin Williams, reveals a secret about the role and importance of poetry to his students. He quotes Whitman: “O me! O life! Of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here, that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse."

Sounds like blogging to me.

Blogs as a response to the media

I was interviewed by e-mail by a journalist in San Francisco the other day, the topic was PhD-students blogging their thesis. As I have a background as a journalist, and as I've been in the interviewees role only twice in my entire life now, I'm looking forward to see the article and how the journalist cites me out of my e-mail responses. For example, how much emotions can you detect in an e-mail? Can you detect that I wish to emphasize this or that, or that I strongly oppose to this and that, if I don't write it out in plain text?

More on this topic in this week's Glaser online, where Mark Glaser talks to billionaire technology entrepreneur and owner of NBA's Dallas Mavericks basketball team, Mark Cuban. Cuban was interviewed via e-mail by a sports columnist at Dallas Morning News. Cuban felt however that the columnist got the facts all wrong so he decided to post the e-mail of the journalist and what he'd answered in his blog. That way, his readers could see for themselves what he'd really said and compare it with the column in the news paper.

Books

I looked through the book “New Media Reader”, edited by Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort, today and found an article from 1992 on the end of books. The author, Robert Coover, describes the world as it was in 1992; “world of video transmissions, cellular phones, fax machines, computer networks…”. In 1992, I was 14 years old and I sure didn’t have my own cellular phone and I wasn’t acquainted with computer networks. I spent large parts of my days playing Boulderdash on my Commodore 64.

Anyways, after sketching out the year of cyberpunks and hyperspace freaks (still 1992), Coover states that at this time, one often heard claims that the print medium is a doomed and outdated technology. Of course, this was the case for the novel as well. Luckily, this didn’t turn out to be true. The annual book fair in Åbo began today and loads of people, especially young folks, were there looking for narrative pleasure and listening to authors speaking on the podiums.

Speaking of books, this one suits me in particular. (It’s a typical girl’s book about Susan getting her dream job. I’ve gotten it as a nine-year-old, if one’s to believe my flourished handwriting.) Like my namesake in the book, I’ve gotten a new job, at MediaCity's development unit iDTV Lab at my university. This means I have to move though, to a town close to my home regions. But what the heck, I’ve lived in Åbo for 6 years now so a change is perhaps just what I need.

Violating rule number one

The author of the book Lehtikeisari, Jyrki Hämäläinen, is accused of citing other writers' text without giving them the credit or mentioning his sources. The possible copyright violation by Hämäläinen, who was the editor in chief for a long time at the popular teenage music magazine Suosikki, has already been discussed by journalists and in the culture section of the largest Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, according to journalist Helena Pilke who reviews this book.

Yenayer blogs about the citing situation in French blogs, and apparently, the "rule" of citing isn't well respected there. Those of you who find this topic interesting, worrying or perhaps see it as a fast lane to stardom and celebrity, have a look at the movie Shattered Glass. It presents another angle to the citing principle as the movie is about citing non-existing people, rather than stealing other people's text. I saw it and I liked the story.

Bluff your way to the top

As a warm up for the party we were going to last night, me and my friends played Balderdash. It's a hilarios bluffing game, where you get to be creative and crazy without feeling shameful about it. The more crazy your suggestions are, the more likely you are to win. And I did.
I'm totally sold on board games like these, and now, this is on my wishlist...

Looks like I've missed The political satire tv show

The same seminar, called “The voices of politics in public”, also included the tv-producer Olli Haikka. He’s one of the guys behind Itse valtiaat, an animated political satire tv show. I didn’t take notes here but he also concluded that today, media is more about entertainment, sensations and persons than before.

While listening to him, I realized that I must be the worst consumer society-citizen ever. The show is extremely popular (it airs prime time, Saturday night). According to Haikka, it has about 700 000 viewers every week (a lot in a country of Finland’s size) and the production team is making another movie about the characters, that are Finnish politics, when they were small kids. And I’ve never seen one single episode! Not one. I stick to the Simpsons instead and I like it that way.

Silent democracy, noisy media

Since I use Jürgen Habermas’s notion “public sphere” in my PhD-studies, I went to a seminar at Turun Yliopisto today where the researcher and member of parliament Arja Alho gave a speach on the issue.

Arja Alho was Minister of Finance in Finland in the mid 1990’s but she resigned from this post as a result of the scandal around the so called Sundqvist-deal (in 1997 I think it was). She took a break from politics, took up her studies and got her doctor’s degree in sociology this year. Her thesis is called "Silent democracy, noisy media" where she looks at four Finnish case studies. Two are political decisions and two are political scandals.

Although she’s both a researcher and member of parliament today, she gave the speech as a researcher, based on her dissertation. Unfortunately, she spoke really fast and I didn’t get everything she said, but here are some hasty notes:

• She uses the notion of Jürgen Habermas, "public sphere", in her dissertation. She feels that the Finnish translation "julkinen sfääri" doesn’t quite capture what she means by the notion so she develops it: Public sphere is to her a common theatre for debate and discussion and to which everybody has access. By participating in this public sphere, the citizen can influence political decision making.


• Even though the public sphere is a dream, hard to implement, there are still grounds to at least try to realize it.


• In Finland, the public sphere is almost to a 100 % the media. Sure, there are public places like the square market but people nowadays meet at shopping malls, and not at libraries and saloons.


• She poses two rhetorical questions: Is a representative democracy enough? Can the citizens participate more? She calls for more discussion between the politicians and the citizens.


• According to studies, Finns’ trust in politicians is quite low. Perhaps it’s time for the decision makers to ponder the reasons to this, and to listen to the feedback? It’s time for them to become partners in discussions.


• She gives a brief recap on her first case study, Finland’s entry to the European monetary union in 1995. Alho found that the politicians forced through the decision to become a member of this union in secret. There was no discussion in the public sphere before the decision. The politicians didn’t discuss the union in the public sphere and therefore, the citizens didn’t get any information to base an opinion on.


• Another case study was the privatization of Sonera, a telecommunications company. Apparently, she focused on how the media disclosed that the director of Sonera, and the former minister, Pekka Vennamo had laid his hands on quite a nice sum of stock. Vennamo and the responsible minister resigned.


• In her disseration, she concludes that the political elite in Finland is small. And what’s more, there’s an oligarchy in the oligarchy in the Parliament. Some members of the government don’t have access to information and the communication needed to make a decision.


• Another conclusion is that media is more entertainment-focused today. The media present fairytales about the good and the bad guys in politics, even though political decisions rarely are either good or bad.


• All in all: We have a technocracy rather than democracy, and the media is noisy rather than analytic. When it comes to media, the noisiness is due to the demand on profit. This breeds a poor democracy.

Alho got many questions, can’t remember them all. The essence of her answers is that the starting point for politicians should be to bring arguments to the public sphere. Thus, those citizens who want to can read them, reflect on them and give feedback. Bringing arguments into the public sphere is not done by increasing the information flow but to promote communication and discussion. She wishes that the decision makers would be more of a discussion partner with the citizens who wish to influence on the politics. She calls for interactive reciprocal action.

In another answer, she develops her critique on representative democracy. She says that it is not enough to vote, lean back and see how the 200 representatives do in the next 4 years, and then exchange them if the result is not satisfying. She draws parallels to Ulrich Beck’s notion of “risk society” here.

The Iraqi war is illegal

Well, this is new. The president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, adressed the UN General Assembly last night in New York. In her speech, she critized the US for marching in to Iraq without getting a green light from the UN. Thus, the war is illegal. The remarkable thing here, in the eyes of a Finnish citizen, is that Finland takes a position on the issues of power nations. In my view, this rarely happens.

Link here (go to Speeches and interviews at the top and choose the one from 21.9)

Iranian bloggers are opposed

Mark Glaser reports on the Iranian blogosphere. The fact that Iran's most trusted medium is the internet is interesting, but not surprising.

About meaning

By the end of the 20th century, media studies research was quite lost, according to David Gauntlett in his book web.studies. It didn't know what to say anymore.

"Studies of media texts, such as a 'critical reading' of a film which identified a bunch of 'meanings' the director hadn't intended and which nobody else had noticed, were clearly a waste of time."

I laugh out loud when reading this and I agree to a certain extent. I always recented the school assignments that would have us analyzing what possible meanings an author wanted to convay in a text, or a director in his or her movie. I believe there are as many movies and books as there are readers and spectators. Therefore, trying to figure out a certain meaning that readers and viewers may identify is ok, but not always when the author or director is concerned. I remember wondering in high school, what if the author didn't have an underlying meaning or message, perhaps he or she just wanted to tell an entertaining story and leave the messages and interpretation to the reader? I wonder how the author or director feels when a critical researcher finds a meaning in a text that was not at all the intention of the artist. One must remember that the spectator of a movie interprets it subjectively in his or her own way, al though culture may influence on the interpretation.

I guess my teacher's question is posed incorrectly. Have the kids do assignments on different possible meanings in the audience of a movie if you must, but not those of the director. I doubt there's always underlying meanings with everything.

This makes me think of the novel I just read, The Da Vinci code, by Dan Brown. It was a fascinating read, perhaps not due to the narrative but to its conspiracy craze. The message here is that the painter Da Vinci hid codes and messages in his art. So to pursue the questions of my ex teachers and some critical researchers: what's the meaning of the author here? To rewrite our history (i.e. that the novel is based on facts)? Or is he just telling a fascinationg story (i.e. the novel is pure fiction)? Or did he want to defame the church or raise the interest for art and cryptology? Or, did he just want to cause commotion and earn a living? Well, he certainly did that.

Beauty always comes with dark thoughts

The president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, has twice lately encouraged the Finns to think higher of themselves. Not in the sense to be proud of who we are and where we come from, no problem there I think, but in the sense of believing in ourselves.

She commented on the issue when we were doing quite bad in the Olympics, and now last night in a television interview (in Swedish with Finnish subtitles).

I don't mean to generalize, but the melancholy and sadness is quite present in Finnish mentality. Perhaps it's the climate; in wintertime, the sun climes above the horizon 6 hours per day where I live, and further up north not at all (called kaamos).

Our black, ironic sense of humour is terrific however (those of you who are unfamiliar with it, read Arto Paasilinna!), and I believe this kind of humour is an instanct for survival. But if you feel sad and gloomy, with the attitude that life's hard and then you die, there will hardly be any world championships coming your way. Halonen does have a point there.

Anyways, I feel the melancholy setting in with all its powers now. Today, we take a giant step towards the winter. It's really windy outside, cold and the leaves are turning yeallow and red. It's darker than before and the obligatory flue is plaguing me.

Ususally, I'm no stranger to positive thinking but the fact of having to endure snow, darkness and cold the next six months does get me down. At times like these, I thank heaven for my ability to see beauty in everything. I think photography is a great life saver here. Instead of getting depressed on how hard life is wintertime here, through the camera lins you see how beautiful life really is after all. (Check out these photos by Jef Maion, for example. They make me happy everytime!)

This doesn't stop me though from going to an orgie of melancholy tonight. Nightwish, a band who thinks that beauty always comes with dark thoughts, is giving a concert tonight... I'll give you a sample on Finnish melancholy, but also pride of who we are. The lyrics is of the song Lappi-Lapland This moment is eternity (from the Angels fall first-album back in 1997).

This Moment Is Eternity

Day possesses no key here
Where moon sheds the cold twilight
This moment is eternity

Land of beauty
Cold and cruel
Fjeld chants echoing
Reflecting the melancholy

Trust the wind
Trust the fire
Call for the hermit
The hermit of the night

Land of raven

ICT:s and well-being

[This will be long! It’s a recap of a Finnish study on social relations, well-being and ICT:s]


I got my hands on a very interesting report on the well-being of the citizens in my town Åbo (Turku in Finnish) yesterday. I wrote a news piece on it for the paper. (I wonder if the editor would have approved if I blogged about this yesterday? The study is extensive, rather than deep, so I focus on completely other issues here than in the article. And it was all over the radio yesterday, I presume, but still... I have to ask for their policy.)

One area of well-being is social support and the 2286 citizens who got the questionnaire were asked to answer questions on their social network. The same questions have been asked in 1995 and 1999 so a time series has been made.

It turns out that more feel that they have a close friend they can trust. 7 % of the women and 16 % of the men feel they don’t have such a friend, and that’s a decline since 1999. The stereotype of the Finnish man, living alone and being socially deprived, crumbles. A man with a family feels just as alone (16 %) as the single guy.

The researcher, Jarkko Rasinkangas, found that more women than men have this kind of social support. Retired women though have the highest rate of lack in close friends (14 %). Where as students are concerned, there’s an increase in lack of social support among female students (about 2 % in 1999, and 6 % in 2003).

In general, face to face meetings with close friends outside the household have declined somewhat, compared with ten years ago. This is the case, especially for people working and students. The reasons Rasinkangas suggests are

1. a hectic life style with difficulties to match a busy work with family


2. new means of communication such as mobile phones, e-mail and internet might be a factor that could explain this. It’s possible that the contacts to kin and friends take place to a lesser extent through face to face meetings, and more via phone and internet.


3. the privatization of activities. We tend to stay at home and do things at home more often.

But there’s no need to draw negative conclusions out of this, Rasinkangas concludes. “For instance, the spreading of the new means of communication can on the contrary increase social contacts and broaden the social network, even though the face to face meetings have declined.”

This issue never ceases to intrigue me. In my Master’s, I found that the absolute majority of the students questioned meet their friends about as often as before. 7 % said they socialize even more and a couple said they socialize less. I also asked them whether they keep in contact with friends and family more, as much or less now. Most say there’s no change, but about 40 % say they’re more often in contact with friends now. Especially those who use internet and e-communication largely feel they communicate more now.

But the core question is, is this bad? Is it bad that people communicate via mobile phones and instant messaging? It’s a fact that ICT:s affect our lives but is it a negative, unwanted effect? And when internet and instant messaging for example reach more people, will the face to face meetings decrease even more? And how can we know for sure that the e-mailing is causing the decline in sociability? It struck me when reading this study that the students and the people working, that don’t socialize as much as before, are very busy groups of people. Perhaps they don’t have the time, or the force to do so? Many students in Finland have to work extra at nights to get by financially; perhaps this has something to do with it as well? I asked the students in my survey how they felt that the ICT:s have affected their seeing their friends. 1/5 say there’s been a positive effect, 67 % hadn’t noticed any effects, 12 % had noticed both negative and positive effects and a few percent say they’ve had only negative experiences.

I’ve been thinking about the pocketful of persons in my study who claim they don’t meet friends face to face, but they do use e-mail. What’s the cause and effect (as the Merovingian in Matrix said)? And what about those who say they meet their friends to a lesser extent than before? Out of my material, there’s no knowing what is cause and what is effect. I’m convinced that the risk of someone “seeing” their friends only electronically exists and I’m sure this is the case for some. But the human being is a social being, can he or she really put the need of social contact aside? That would be something worth studying!

Anyways, on with Rasinkangas’s study. He had a look at what people do with their spare time and found that culture is high-rated whereas media is not. People watch less TV, read less newspapers and don’t read as many books as they used to. So what do they do? They go out more, to restaurants and the like, and go more often to the theatre and to concerts.

I also posed this question in my study and the results were: 17 % watches less tv, whereas 3 % watch more (and 80 as much), 15 % don’t read the newspaper as much and 15 % reads it more, and 14 % don’t listen to the radio as much, but 12 % do it more. And many were active in going to the movies, playing cards or participating in a union’s activities. Also the heavy users of internet were active.

Studies like Rasinkangas’s interest me as they look to the whole population (or the one aged between 18-75) and they can compare trends over time. Due to lack of economy and time, I “only” did a survey on university students. And it’s like Rasinkangas say, many of them are heavy users because their studies require them to be so.

There’s no copy of his study on the net, so I can’t link to it. But it’s available at the libraries. The name is Hyvinvointi Turussa- turkulaisten hyvinvoinnin muutosten seurantaa vuosina 1995, 1999 ja 2003. Jarkko Rasinkangas, Turun kaupungin sosiaalikeskuksen julkaisu nro 1A/2004.

Why, oh why?

Today was a fun day at work. Journalists (and authors, apparently) have six “must ask” questions: what, when, who, where, how and why. My favorite has always been “why”. But today, I decided to replace the why with what. Example: I didn’t focus on the question “Why did you do this project?” but rather on “What did you learn from this project?”.

I get different answers, I know, and that’s the point. I figured I wanted to favor a future thinking. One easily focuses on the past and the reasons for something, and forgets about the lessons learned. The “Where do you go from here?” part is often forgotten. And it worked quite well. The persons I interviewed really had to reflect on how to answer as being asked “what can you do to carry this plan into effect” is something completely different from a “why”-question. It demands a plan, an analysis, a look into the future, whereas the “why” is easily instantly answered with memories and experience of something that has already passed.

Women's studies

I was at the book store today and while waiting for my order, I skimmed through the textbooks for the senior high school. I noticed that the textbook of philosophy of (or is it "outlook on" life? My English fails here) life had a chapter on women's rights.

The discovery made me glad as I can't remember that the books I read in sixth form had any such topics.

One could question the need for women's studies in such a equal country such as Finland, but it is needed. This advertising campaign, for example, that's all around town now (see picture). I don't like it. It's a tv channel promoting the new series Nip/tuck, a series about two Miami South Beach plastic surgeons and their lives. But still. Why not just use a photo of the two guys starring the show? As it is now, I get the impression that this body needs some fixing by a plastic surgeon.

And internationally, German discount house Lidl has forced Polish and Czech female employees to wear red headband during their menstruation periods. Why? The workers are allowed to go to the toilets only on scheduled breaks. But women having their period are however, generously enough, allowed to go without asking for special permission and the red headband helps the supervisor to identify who's allowed to go, and who's not.

Exciting night ahead!

There's an exciting night awaiting all hockey fans in Finland tonight. The 2004 World Cup of Hockey title is at stake tonight and Finland is facing Canada in the final. For some, it's bigger than Midsummer and Christmas wrapped in one. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Go Finland!

Update: Canada won over Finland with 3-2. A well-earned victory, according to those who stayed up for the game last night, but Finland fought well.

L'Heure Verte

Absinthe was the drink of the artists' and writers' in the late 19th century. Many were intrigued by it, for example Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Toulouse-Lautrec and Ernest Hemingway.

And as a "by the way", when interviewing a French painter today, I find out that Absinthe is now available at Alko, the independent, entirely State-owned company that has a monopoly in Finland on the retail sale of alcoholic beverages containing over 4.7 per cent of alcohol by volume. Apparently, it hasn't been before, but it has been sold in restaurants though. Well, now the Finns too can have L'Heure Verte at home too.

The tables got turned

I was interviewed by Yle, Finland's national public service broadcasting company, today. They're doing a feature on instant messaging, that I did a study on about a year ago, and my role was to cast light on the phenomena as a researcher.

It was very awkward in two ways. Firstly, I work as a reporter at a newspaper. It's my job to ring people up and ask for a well-founded opinion at once and to ask them to hand in a simple solution to whatever problem or conflict I write about. But I've never had the tables turned. I've never been interviewed by a newspaper or tv. (Al though I did do an outstanding role in a tv-drama on youth and alcohol, made by the local tv-crew in my home village back in the 80's, but that doesn't count here.)

And what happens? I find myself becoming the difficult interviewee, the one that many journalists dread. I demand to know the plot of the feature, what questions will I be asked and point out several times that this and that needs to be emphasized. I was going to demand to see it before it airs, as I'm entitled to, but I forgot.

I guess, and hope, I posed these questions because I know that so much is simplified and generalized in media today. And I don't feel up to making broad statements concerning my research on instant messaging. I was actually planning on giving long answers to make sure that the risk of misunderstanding is as small as possible. But once the reporter removed the microphone from my face, he complemented me for being so brief and concise... Darn it! Occupational injury, or bad habit, I guess. I know the meaning of mediasexy. But it will be interesting to see how the programme turns out. I often wonder how the persons I interview feel about the published article. Do they recognize themselves at all, and did I get all the facts al right? I know some have doubted that we attented the same get-together...

The second issue that made me feel awkward is the medium itself. I was just talking the other day with a friend of mine about the hype of tv. It seems like many would do anything to get to be on the telly. They join reality tv-shows and the like. Visuality is everything, if you've been in the paper of tons better, on tv, you count. I would never ever join Big Brother or any other "voyeristic drama" in the genre. I doubt there's a sum that big that would make me break this promise. And my drive for recognition and fame is not that great.

While writing, a third thing comes to mind regarding why I was a bit nervous on being asked questions and supposed to serve intelligent answers straight up. I know by experience that many believe absolutely everything that's written in the paper. I figure perhaps it's the same thing with tv. Perhaps people think I'm proclaiming some sort of absolute truth. This is not how I want to appear. People can be mistaken, and so can the messanger (the reporter).

I miss a "discussion" outlook, where the media consumer says "Hey, that's one way of looking at it" and develops the thought, contributes with opinions, filling out the blanks and correcting what's wrong. I guess I'm looking for a joint reporting where the readers could contribute to the news as no reporter knows exactly everything, neither does the persons interviewed. And this is where the blog comes in. It'd be great to have a blog run alongside the news making a news reporting at a newspaper.

I hope I'm not coming across as a tired journalist who's looking to deny the responsability to report objectively and correctly. That's not my point. I just feel that one should think independently, and not uncritically accept everything that floats around in the media.

Naive bloggers?

I've blogged this before, in the form of teenagers not always fully realizing the consequences of what they post on the net. Today I found an interesting site on the matter, but this deals with grown-ups, not teenagers. Fernanda Viégas, a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, conducted a survey on blogging and she found a naiveté in how most bloggers think about persistence and how it operates in networked environments such as the net. The bloggers responding to the survey believe in general that they are liable for what they publish online. They were not however concerned about the persistent nature of what they publish, and neither did they believe someone would sue them for things they had blogged. This surprises me, as the bloggers in the study say they've gotten in trouble both with friends and family as well as employers because of their postings.

What's up, Kallio?

Finland's first equivalent to metroblogging was born today. Kallioblogi wants to offer civic journalism right from the streets of Kallio in Helsinki. Even though I live in another town, I’ll stop by often as the site seems well worth reading.

[Via Schizoblog]

Illuminated umbrella

Here's an example of the motto of the times we currently live in, "Be visible, and you exist". Not only does this umbrella keep you dry, but also does it light your way. Thus, it's a great way for you to stand out from the crowd, and to make sure to be seen, thanks to 4 AA batteries and 2 krypton bulbs (the umbrella weighs half a kilo). Unfortunately, it's sold out at Wishingfish.

[Via Pc för alla]

Blogger survey

Research into the psychology of blogging is conducted at the RMIT University in Australia, in the form of a questionnaire. The purpose is to explore the nature of blogging and more traditional, pencil and paper style diary writing. The research questions are: What motivates journal writers? Are there personality differences between people who keep their journals online and those who keep pencil and paper journals?

I like the look of the survey. It is clear and appealing to fill out, and it doesn’t seem to long either. Results are promised as a Christmas present, in December, though only to the participants. This reminds me, by the way, that I should start writing the article on my e-survey I did for my Master’s…

Cool design!

iMac G5 has arrived, and my oh my it's hot. I want it, now!

Blogbullies

Last Thursday, an article on cyber bullies by Amy Harmon was published in New York Times. As blogs are tools that "enable the harassment to be both less obvious to adults and more publicly humiliating, as gossip, put-downs and embarrassing pictures are circulated among a wide audience of peers with a few clicks.", they are discussed in the article. You must register though to read the article, thus here's an excerpt:

"Everyone hates you," read an anonymous comment directed toward a girl who had signed her name to a post about exams on a blog run by middle-school students at the Maret School in Washington, D.C., last term.

"They would talk about one girl in particular who had an acne problem, calling her pimpleface and things like that which was really mean," one Maret student said. "That stuck with me because I've had acne, too."

One of the girls who started the blog said she and her friends had deleted all the posts because so many people - including some parents - began to complain. "I didn't see why they cared so much," said the girl, who preferred not to be identified. "It's obviously not as serious as it seems if no one's coming up to you and saying it."

It seems to me like some kids don't see that even though it might feel unreal posting mean things on the Internet, almost like writing a diary, the consequences of the action are very real indeed.

End of season

I'm getting in my car again, driving the 350 km to my family and my summer cabin out in the arcipelago. This weekend is a festive one in the region where I come from (we name it villaavslutning or veneziaden, depending on the area). We "celebrate" or mourn for, depends on one's interests I guess, the end of the archipelago season. It's definitely getting darker quickly now, and it's quite chilly outside. There are bonfires on every small island, by every cottage, both by sea and by land. And there will be lots of fireworks! I for sure belong to those mourning that the cottage season is gone.

Unprofitable

My morning news paper Hufvudstadsbladet pays attention to a study (in Swedish) made in Sweden by the central organisation of Swedish academics a while ago. The substance of it is that, in some cases, it is economically not profitable to get a Master's degree in the Nordic countries. This is due to the Nordic way of pursuing a wage policy which shows solidarity with low-paid workers, therefore the wages for academics are low. And again, surprise surprise, the women are the losers as professions like librarians, physiotherapists and occupational therapists are low-paid. Economists and doctors score high on the other hand.

I've written about this before. Many Finns go to either university or polytechnics. But if this is the reality that faces them after graduation, the brain drain could increase. I should have gone for my dream of becoming a florist!

Postman prank

This is what the staircase in our house looked like last Sunday. The guy who delivers the pile of advertising brochures twice a week has apparently been out of control. There were more of them lying around the floor, but someone either threw them in the trash in the yard, or grabbed it along with them to read during dinner, before I got the chance to take a photo.

I like to think that the mailman was making a statement. It's not such an unlikely idea. I noticed that his post is vacant now. Perhaps he felt like he wanted to say what he really thought about his job, at his last round of work.

Perhaps he was tired of handing out enticements to buy a new identity every season, allurements to shop til you drop in the name of the national economy and temptations to make body, soul and mind (and the mobile phone, the home and the car as well) a project that can and should be ameliorated and updated infinitely.

Perhaps he's an example of what Sorbonne professor Michel Maffesoli talked about at the ISEA. He's noted some turning points in our society. Two of these are political and social. According to Maffesoli, we've reached a saturation of unifying the society. Maybe our mailman tried to favor consumption at the local market hall or market place in town, instead of consumption of global wares from global companies. Another new feature in our society, observed by Maffesoli, is the return of the emotional in social life. Perhaps this outburst of emotions, expressed by throwing papers around the staircase, was a way of rejecting the contemporary society, characterized by cold figures, rationality and productivity. Maybe he was taking up the cudgels for more amusement, spontaneity and joy in life.

Or maybe, just maybe, am I reading too much in to what probably was a prank by a bored young mailman. Although I hope I'm right regarding the enchantment part. I think emotions are coming back into fashion, because it's hip to be in touch with one's feelings, to explore one's inside and develop as a human being. But this is something that one should do and perform in the spare time, at weekends or so. Never at work, or in "public". I'm tired of the logic and rational, and I long for affections. If I were to chose between the Matrix and Shrek, I'd go for Shrek anytime!

Well, today's Wednesday, and my mail box is usually stuffed with advertising on Wednesdays and Sundays. I wonder where I'll find it today, if I get any at all!

The present tomorrow

Yesterday, Tuesday 24th, I accidently changed the time and date of a post, so that the date was one day ahead. This got me really confused, as my blog claimed that I had posted something on Wednesday 25th, a date that only a couple of islands in the Pacific Ocean had experienced at that point. Since I was quite positive that it was a Tuesday here in Åbo, I was quite lost there for a while. But then I realized that not only is it possible to change the time and date of a post backwards in time, but also ahead in time.

At ISEA, Jill Walker talked about timestamps and how essential time is in blog posts. She asked whether we are in charge of time in blogs, and the obvious answer is yes, we are. What a powerful thing to master!

Ecological footprints

This test clears my conscience, even though I'm far from a great, super-consumer. It measures your ecological footprint, with regards to what you eat, how you travel and live and the size of the waste you produce. This is expressed in biologically productive land and ocean areas necessary to maintain these services. My total footprint is 3.5 global hectares, where as the average for Finns is 8.4 hectares per person. Nonetheless, the test results reminds me: IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.9 PLANETS! Auch! I thought I was doing good at cutting down on waste production and using public transport and my bicycle instead of my car.

And while I'm at the topic of consumtion and population, I'll mention that according to the Population Reference Bureau, there will be an estimated 9.276 millions of us in the world, in 2050. Today, there's 6.3 millions. But who's to say? A lot can happen in 46 years. Epidemics might devastate entire regions, family planning may break through, and when women get a chance to educate themselves, the birthrate tends to go down.

Job therapy

Since I'm tired of eating macaroni, I applied for an extra job; a couple of hours of data storing at a tele company every night until September-November. Well, after a first sorting out of the record high number of applicants, the headhunter called me in for an interview today. But this wasn't enough. Now, she will analyse the interviewees, recommend a few to the tele company, which will do further interviewing next week. What circumstantial and difficult to get a part-time, evening job for two months, that was furthermore labeled "urgent"! What happened to those days when you called a company up, said "hey, I'm interested in your activities, and you can't do without me" and they'd take you on if you dressed decently and promised to show up on time? This is how I got most of my summer jobs, actually all of them when I think about it. All this bureaucracy surprised me and I wonder, is it necessary for part-time evening jobs like this one? But of course, this procedure employes people. But still.

I'm probably not gonna get the job if the headhunter reads this, but it's ok. My former boss at the local newspaper called me and begged me to come and work for them in September. I agreed, so shortly, I'll be blogging as a journalist.

After the interview today I figured I needed some light entertainment, thus voilà:

What kind of social software are you? [via Anti-mega]



And what are you addicted to? [via Schizoblog]


You're addicted to.....

Alcohol!
Mmmmmmm, Mmmmmm, Bitch! I like you, alcohol is one of the better things to be addicted to. The only bad part is it makes you feel like doing nothing and the next morning you get a terrible hangover.

Wireless experience in Helsinki

I’m not much for art exhibitions where all you do is walk around, lazily watching abstract paintings at the walls. But this one I like, ‘cause you get to participate and do things with the art. In this case, you create your own art by typing in messages on this all round keyboard. The messages you write circulate in what seems to be a digital crystal ball, for everyone to see. If you’re on your way to Helsinki, do check out the interactive “Wireless experience” exhibition, it’s open until October 24th.

Air Angus Young

Does this make you excited? If you want it, then I hope you've signed up for the Air guitar world championships in Oulu. In a couple of days, we'll know who wins the Flying Finn-guitar and the title Best Air Guitar Player of the year 2004.

Photo messaging

Sending pictures via the mobile phone isn't such a big hit as the mobile operators would have hoped, according to the Finnish paper Tekniikka & Talous. There's already been sent over a billion text messages this year in Finland, but only a couple of millions multi media messages. This is quite fascinating when considering that half more than of all the mobile phones sold today have a camera, and people tend to update their phones relatively often.

One of the possible reasons for this is the lack of synchronization. Since the screens and amount of pixels differ in many phones, the pictures sent don't always reach the receiver properly.

Professor Machiko Kusahara from Japan talked about the mobile phone culture (Ketai) in Japan at the ISEA conference. According to her, moblogging is very popular in Japan and the camera function in the phones is highly appreciated. It's not unusual to see someone reaching their hand up in the air, taking a picture of what is actually happening in the crowd in front of them. The mobile phone becomes an extension of your body (McLuhan's famous notion), in this case, the eyes that don't see what's going on due to the crowd.

While Kusahara claims that many women use the mobile phones and the camera function (many mobile phone ads are directly aimed at women) in Japan, English Nina Wakeford found that the four London lads she studied weren't interested at all in photo messaging. What they wanted was to sit down at the pub and show the picture to their friends and talk about it there. Someone in the audience commented that he had reached the same conclusion in his study, that kids don't seem to be interested in multi media messaging, and he asked Wakeford what she makes of this. She replied that people want to share the context and discuss the photo face to face with others, and not only share the picture as such.

According to the article I mentioned above, the average Sonera connection user sends one photo message per year, but more than one text message per day. I took a couple of photos with my mobile at the conference, here's one of professor Kusahara.


.

Off to ISEA Helsinki conference

I'm off to the great, big capital tomorrow morning, to attend the Helsinki conference of ISEA. Even Westwang's blogging the conference that's currently taking place on board the Silja Europa cruiser ferry (I would love to be there, of course for the programme but also as it would have been a nice contrast to my memories I have from diverse drinking and partying trips I've done in my youth on the ship).

Jill Walker is also blogging from the cruiser ferry. I'm really looking forward to her presentation on timestamps on Friday morning, and to my great delight, I found the abstract on her site. I won't be blogging the events the next few days, but I will contribute with a résumé and thoughts next week.

Chat behaviour

Last night, the readers of the evening paper Aftonbladet had the opportunity to chat with the Swedish ambassador Margareta Winberg (a copy of it is here, only in Swedish though). The reason was that Winberg and a collegue of hers, Annika Barthine, have written a feministic manifesto, encouraging women to make their own choises and to refuse to stay underpaid at work, among other things.

I joined in (though my question never appeared so it remains unanswered) and while waiting for the chat session to start, I noticed that the editors had chosen two questions as a headline, or introduction. I don't remember the first question, but the other one was "Do we need a feminist party?". The rest of the introduction was something like "MW will be here shortly to chat with you and answer your questions".

I remember thinking that this could get the debate off the track. Nowhere in their manifesto, or in the relating article about them, did Winberg and Barthine say they plan to found a feminist party! So why did the paper decide to pose this irrelevant question to the chatters? And as it turned out, 7 of the 16 questions posed to Winberg during the chat session were about the needs, structure and ideology of a feminist party, even though she's never said anything about founding such a party. It irritates me a lot that Aftonbladet governed the debate the way they did.

For whom do you blog?

I haven’t updated my blog for a while now and I’ve thought to myself, should this bother me? The basic idea here is: Am I writing only for myself, or am I writing for an imagined public? Am I, as a blogger, put under an obligation to regularly blog as I might have an audience that expect to read pieces of my life every now and then? This comes to mind again when reading the paper I just commented on below. Esposito writes:

Samuel Johnson was simply wrong when he famously said that no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. The truth is that recognition is the greater motivator.

Little in this world can be seen as black and white, neither can this. I guess I write both for myself and for an audience. I think better when I write so for this reason, I'm very selfish and egoistic about blogging. Plus, in this way, I have a collection of thoughts and useful links always at hand. But naturally, I hope that a potential reader is interested in the topic and might even benefit from reading my posts. And yes, it’s a motivator when someone e-mails me to ask further questions about something I blogged, or just to say hi.

If you are a blogger, for whom do you blog?

Blogs and publishing

In the current issue of First Monday, there’s an article on Open Access publishing in relation to academic research publications by Joseph J Esposito. As a remedy for the high costs of journals, and for the difficulty for scholars to get published in journals and get access to these, Esposito suggests Open Access publishing on the net. This is where blogs come in as they are a form of OA publishing. Further on, he states that the future of online publishing lies within such publishing that is personal and not professional. This is a weblog in a nutshell! Or most weblogs, I should add.

Esposito seems rather optimistic when it comes to the future of blogs, even though only 2 % of the American ICT users have created a blog, and the phenomenon is still not universal. He sees blogging as the last resort today, when you want to spread the word about something, and the local newspaper refuses to take you on. But blogs will increasingly be the first, and perhaps only, resort as blogs reach universal status. I’d love to be around that day!

To further emphasize that blogs are the ones likely to outdo world publishers, Esposito compares the weblog to the mobile phone. Blogs are creating new media forms to address new market needs, according to Esposito. So are wireless mobile phones and look at their success today. But the writer is skeptical to the chance of discourse forms - such as blogs - taking over the world of academic research soon. Unfortunately, I have to agree with him, but I hope that scholars and researchers would embrace blogging. And hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, like Morgan Freeman said in Shawshank Redemption.

An I for an i

Wired News will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet. There never was a reason for capitalizing the word in the first place, and therefore the decision.

In Swedish, and in Finnish, the capital letter I is still used in the word internet. Why? Both the Swedish language committee in Finland and the Swedish group for computer terminology in Sweden recommend capitalizing as the internet is a name and a “proper noun for a specific computer web”. I suggest we write the word with a minuscule, a lower case letter that is, in Swedish and Finnish too. Or to be more precise, that the linguists would start recommending the form "internet", because people are using this decapitalized way of writing more and more anyways.

Vacation

Zzz

I'm off on vacation now, and I'll try to relax like these two fellows. This means that the blog won't be updated in a week or so.
Cheers.

Roadmap

I got a hold of an almost one year old issue of the ladies’ magazine Amelia. The Swedish author Kajsa Ingemarsson was interviewed and she said that her motto is “Life is not a distance for transportation”.

But I wonder. I’ve spent quite some time on the roads this summer, driving through the country. And while sitting there, behind the wheel, I’ve realized that this actually is life that I’m witnessing here. Life is a highway. Some drive at top speed and won’t stop at nothing to pass others, some don’t. The roadhogs are a form of social deviation. And drivers standing still at the side of the road (the ones with a warning sign behind the cars, not the coffee yearning!) don’t participate in “everyday life”, perhaps due to illness or so.

And just as there are underlying systems that influence how you lead your life, so are there in traffic, for instance the three heavily loaded trucks in front of you, the speed limits and the quality of the road. And the fact that most people actually drive on the roads, and not through the forest, implies the choices that many make, such as creating a family and getting a job. And if you turn to a side road, this represents a change of something, field of study, job or hobby for example.

But in my opinion, this is not an appealing model of viewing life. I’d rather see life as a big meadow, where you’re free to take any path you like. Only big rocks and ditches may limit your way and actions. I imagine, perhaps in my own naïve way, that if life was a meadow, we’d make our own, individual choices and not go with the rest (that is not to nicely join the endless line of cars). But since my family has reared cattle, I’ve observed sheep graze out in the free. And there’s no individuality there. They stick to their group and follow each other, and the leader sheep, almost everywhere.

Does it sound hazy and scatterbrained? Well, I gotta focus on the traffic too, you know, so I can't waste too much energy on thinking while driving... Feel free to contribute with other analogies of life, I'd love to hear what others feel. I guess that both of these ways of looking at life has its own pros and cons. While driving the 4 ½ hour long drive tonight (in a car with no air conditioning in 27 degrees Celsius!), I’ll probably have time to give this some more thought.

Blogging polemic

Charles Cooper, the executive editor of commentary at the technology news site CNET News.com, is disappointed with the Convention bloggers. According to him, the blog posts were characterized by a see-me, hear-me tenor, and not by journalistic principles.

David Weinberger blogs this and answers Cooper in a videoreply.

Smorgasbord

I’ve taken up listening to my childhood favorite radio station again, P3. It’s one of many channels by the public service radio broadcaster in Sweden. There’s however no frequency where I live these days, so I have to listen to it via the internet, which is ok.

But not only can I listen to P3, but also to P3 Svea (only Swedish music), P3 Rockster (rock music only), P3 Street (Hiphop and r’n’b) and P3 Star. What a segmentation, I don’t know which one to choose! But since I like to listen to blends of music, and not just one genre, I usually go with the “original” P3.

Mark Glaser had similar experiences with the smorgasbord phenomenon when he tried to follow the Democratic National Convention, not via tv, radio or print media, but via blogs only.

"Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the blog-only experience was knowing where to go for what, and when. With so many blogs in on the action -- or commenting on the action from afar -- it often felt like trying to find a snowflake in an avalanche. On TV, you might have the choice of the networks (for an hour each night) or Fox News, CNN or MSNBC. But with blogs, you had to choose between a smorgasbord of offerings."

Glaser decided to use many sources to get information on the Convention, among others a "best of the blogs" blog, Technorati and Bloglines that run feeds from various weblogs. Perhaps this is the third stage of the history of media? By his famous statement “The medium is the message”, Marshall McLuhan meant that the history of the media falls into 3 periods. The first one is an oral culture, where a piece of news was narrated and the way of thought was circular. The second one was the culture of writing and printing where linear thinking develops. The third period is the electronic culture, where, according to McLuhan, the media will bring about radical shifts. Perhaps this hypertext, where the reader jumps around between websites, following links, travels back and forth in a text and in different settings is this radical shift.

Finland scores high on education

While wandering about at Newsweek's site, I found an interesting piece of news. If you want to get a good education, Finland's the place you want to be in. The reasons for this are

1. a high quality of teaching
   
2. the teachers' possibility to choose what material they want to use in their teaching
   
3. Finnish students don't pay for their education. In fact, university and polytechnics students receive a grant of about 400 euros per month from the state for living expences.
   

As a consequence, many (about 65 percent, says Liat Radcliffe in Newsweek) Finns go to either universities or polytechnics. The article didn't however mention that many educated Finns with a Master's degree move abroad, taking their expertice knowledge and tax money out of the country. Some fear that this "brain drain" will increase in the future.

Updating my Walkman

As the music freak that I am, I'm considering buying an iPod mini, the green-clad one. I only have to consult my wallet first. I realize I'm not the only one who's undertaken this process. In this week's international edition of Newsweek, there's an article on iPod as a cultural icon. The professor of kinesiology at the University of Michigan, Victor Katch, is cited:
"When my students see me on campus with my iPod, they smile." "It's sort of a bonding."
The best product wins, is Steve Jobs' comment.

Go figure us out!

David Weinberger is blogging the Democratic Convention for the Boston Globe. He observes that the media is watching the bloggers carefully, trying to figure them out. It's of course a good thing that the representatives of the media open their eyes to blogging. But although Weinberger states that "our [the bloggers'] presence is undeniable", I didn't spot one single mention on the invited bloggers at the Convention in today's news in Finland. Unfortunately.

Blog survey

A group of American computer science graduate students invite bloggers to fill out their survey.

Blogging has, in one way or another, affected each of us either as readers or writers. We wanted to find out more about this phenomenon and try to better understand how universal blogging is and the differences in blogging practice across cultures.

The student Norman Su keeps a blog about the research and the questionnaire.


[Via Feministe]

The Thames speaking

Speaking of being accessible 24/7 on your mobile, this is how Phil Day in London feels about it:

Mobile phones continue to be an invasion of space in cafes, restaurants, shops, trains, buses etc. People are rude and too loud on their phones. Weaving in traffic or slowing down for no clear reason is always an indication someone is using their phone. I threw my phone in the Thames when I retired and don't miss it.

More on the subject of our reliability on mobile phones here.

The art of conversation

I found a list of "Conversational cheap shots", or things one shouldn't say when engaged in a conversation, but my, oh my, aren't these familiar quotes! Especially sentences such as "I used to think that way when I was your age." and "You're new here, aren't you?" have crossed my path, and the reason for this is that I'm a young woman, no doubt. I have to mention my "favorite" one though it is in Swedish: Lilla gumman. Very disparaging and incapacitating!

Update: Det kan ha varit en freudian slip, trötthet eller nåt annat. Men det var ju "Lilla vännen" jag avsåg att skriva, inte "Lilla gumman". Det står för något helt annat, åtminstone för mig!

testing,testing, heaven's on fire

Update: Seems to be working alright. I'm checking out Blogger's Bloggerbot. Photoblogging that is.

Finnish political blogs

I just read the report "Political blogs - craze or convention" by the Hansard Society (you can download it for free here). The organisation asked 8 citizens to read and judge a sample of 8 political British blogs. As part of the review process, the jurors were required to post comments on the blogs and check back on their posts. The jurors were largely disappointed when they found little activity around their comments, both on the behalf of the blogger and on the readers'.

As I read the experiences of the "jury", I come to think of the weblog by Eva Biaudet, a Finnish politician. Many of the visitors who have commented her posts have also asked her questions, and she does answer some of them. There's only one response within the comments, between readers.

Further in the report: "Distinguishing four primary modes of expression in the bloggers’ postings – fact, opinion, experience, and questioning – we found that more than half of their messages were expressions of opinion, less than a quarter referred to experience, while 14.3% were factual, and only 6% sought answers.
This could indicate that political blogs, and blogging in general, are a modern type of soapbox, where enquiry and interaction are of less importance than furthering one’s views. This insight also indicates that there is a lot more work to be done in terms of politicians participating in online forums such as the blogosphere, rather than simply putting forward their own opinions for the public to read."

I guess Eva belongs to the minority (the 6 % who seeks answers), as her initial post states that "I hope you will find me here and give me ideas and comments on politics or anything." She ends the post with a question: Have you got any ideas to make Europe more interesting?

3 other weblogging Finnish politicians, Heidi Hautala, Anneli Jäätteenmäki and Rosa Meriläinen appear on the list of Finnish weblogs. These 3 women belong to those who express opinion and share experience. Or used to express, maybe I should add, as the weblogs haven't been updated for quite some time now.

And what's more, the important aspect of blogging - the possibility to post a comment - is not present in 2 of these 3 weblogs. Even though the posts contain political opinions, there's no possibilty to ask, argue against or develop the thoughts further in a comment. Neither do the blogs have any links or blogroll, which makes these weblogs mainly a form of self-expression, or a diary if you like. Heidi Hautala's readers do have a possibility to ask questions, and read the answers online, but these comments are not directly linked to posts in the weblog. There's an e-mail adress to Rosa Meriläinen at the bottom of the page, but no contact information is available in Anneli Jäätteenmäki's blog. It seems like enquiry and interaction is not top priority here. Neither is frequent updating.

Prosperity

The paeonia in its heyday. This one, also known as Dr Alexander, blossoms in our garden.

High tech guarantees a better life?

Last weekend, I visited quite a few relatives back home in Ostrobothnia. And naturally, they ask me what I'm up to these days. I explain that I'm a researcher, examining weblogs.
In 9 out of 10 times, 3 questions follow:

1. First up is "Why can't you get a decent job, where you work with your body and hands?" Answer: Because I choose not to.
   
2. Second: "Who pays you to do this?" Answer: Rather vague as my funding ends in about 2 weeks...
3. And the most fascinating one: "How does your research make my life any better?" This is a good and justified query as many researchers are funded by taxpayers' money. But what's more, it's interesting in my case because the question expresses a doubt that high tech equates a better life, and thus implies that little research on the matter is needed.
   

Sociologists have concluded that technology has been important for social change. Take Gutenberg's printing press, the railroads and the factories for example. But not all sociologists equate progress in technology with great progress in life quality. Marx, Weber and Durkheim thought that in the long run, technology fosters individualism, which is not always considered as a good thing.
According to Marx, capitalism fosters a culture of selfishness. Weber thought that the rationality in modern societies wears away kinship ties, while the ever expanding bureaucracy manipulates and isolates people. Durkheim again believed that as the member of the modern society is more and more interdependent, s/he is less able to create a common moral framework within which to judge right and wrong.
Will my thesis on communication in weblogs enhance my relatives' life quality? Will also weblogs foster individualism? Will there even be any weblogs as we know them now around, say, in a decade? Alex Halavais states that: "Blogging is dead, long live blogging. I suspect that over the next few years we will see a lot of calls suggesting that blogging has died, and I suspect that in a sense they will be right."
It's too early to say, especially here in Finland where the phenomenon of blogging is slowly taking off, not to mention to predict the actual impact on the life of Mr and Mrs Citizen. But I've got a couple of possible scenarios regarding the future of blogs and it will be fun to see if any of them turn out to be true.

Stupido

The former Portuguese prime minister José Manuel Durão Barroso is interviewed in today's Hufvudstadsbladet, as he's likely to be elected president of the European Commission. Towards the end of the article, the reporter Marit Ingves writes: "Barroso is already keeping in touch with the governments of the different countries [in EU] and he says that he's disappointed in them. He's working on getting more women working in the Commission but obviously in vain.
- When I discuss this matter I'm answered: yes, but you yourself is not a woman."
If this is true, and he's cited correctly, then it is the most stupid argument I've heard in a very long time. According to some member states in the EU, there's no need for women working in the Commission because the president is a man! I'm not sure whether to burst into laughter or tears.

Une carte des bloggers parisiens

I like this idea, it's a map of bloggers in the city of Paris. 144 bloggers are listed so far. Apparently, it's a betting to see whether the Parisians can come up to the New Yorkers and their site where 3546 bloggers are listed.

And by the way, la France, joyeuse fête nationale!

[Via Douze lunes]

No sun screen but cinema screen

Since it's freaking cold, the worst summer since 1928 they say, I've been watching a lot of movies lately.

Spiderman 2 - enjoyable, easy to watch but not as brilliant as some feel.
Pretty woman - since many women about my age praise this movie to the sky, I decided to buy it on sales and watch it. I'm quite tired of the wide-eyed looks when I admit I haven't seen it. But what a waste of time and money! I wouldn't be surprised if this fairytale story increased prostitution when it hit the movie theatres back in 1990. Gere's character was sleazy and if girls grew up looking up to this Vivian (J Roberts), I feel sorry for all of us.
Shattered glass - based on a true story about a journalist at The New Republic who wrote phoney articles. Good acting and a good plot. I wonder what Glass is up to nowadays. Will he, and should he, ever get hired as a reporter again? Does he even want to?

Allbritton back in Iraq

Christopher Allbritton is the reporter that was funded entirely by bloggers and blog readers to go to Iraq and blog there. Now he's gone back to Iraq but this time, he both blogs and writes for Time magazine and New York Daily News. For this reason, he's been accused of "selling out". I don't agree however with his critics.

An interesting quote by Allbritton from the article on this in OJR: "Blogs are an addition to mainstream journalism, providing opinion, perspective and possibly even fact-checking. They're NOT a substitution. They should not be, and I hope they don't become one. The media ecosystem needs newspapers of records and crazy bloggers both. Remember, the goal is an enlightened public, and if blogs help in that regard, then they should be celebrated. But if they don't, then they're no better than an annoying pamphleteer."

Inspiration drought

Ususally, I have no problem with filling dozens of pages with text. But I do now. The last few weeks, I've related Habermas´s notion of the public sphere to blogs and to blogging (that's presumably what my dissertation is all about). I've read tons, thought, taken notes and made a mindmap of ideas on paper. But now, when I should transmit these thoughts to an article (my first...), my fingers freeze. Perhaps I'm distracted by the fact that the rock festival Ruisrock hits my town this weekend, or the sunny weather, or the fact that I've got a job interview tomorrow. Whatever the reason, it truly is an odd experience.

I've read somewhere (my memory fails here so unfortunately, I can't provide a link) that instead of being afraid that one's article isn't good enough, and thus holding on to and improving it forever, one should keep writing and publishing many texts as this is how you learn. You're better off being Woody Allen, who's produced 39 quite enjoyable movies since 1965, than Renny Harlin who stakes big time on a movie from time to time, but with a mediocre result.

In my search for inspiration, I googled and found that "things around me" is what gets people's creative motor going. That's quite general but I guess it could to the trick. It sure works for Manu Chao. I saw the re-run of a documentary of him last night. He says that for a song to be born, the things that are right there under his nose must inspire him, and preferably within five minutes. If he is inspired within this period of time, there will be a track. If not, he drops the whole thing. Considering how brilliant his albums are, it seems like a good creativity plan.

Tales of life and death in the streets of London

There's an interview with Londoner paramedic and blogger Tom Reynolds in today's Guardian. He's got a loyal audience that appreciates his writings, but Reynolds doubts that he comes across as a good writer. "...I look at [my posts] and think, oh god I've used too many commas ... the only thing is I write fairly plainly. I think that's the main thing." he says.

I agree completely on the grammar issue: It's the story or the message that's important, not the linguistics. One's knowledge of where to put the commas is a matter of secondary importance when blogs are concerned. But this is where my agreement ends, I think Reynolds writes fascinating entries. Check out the superb blog here.

BlogTalk streaming

Unfortunately, I'm not able to attend BlogTalk 2.0 in Vienna, but I'm looking forward to following it online. Link to the conference stream here. The conference kicks off today with the keynote by Mark Bernstein: The Social Physics of New Weblog Technologies.

Catchy tunes on Ebay

There are currently two songs around on the same theme: Ebay. One track is simply called "Ebay", was released last year and is a cover of "I want it that way" by the Backstreet Boys. The other one is more catchy; I simply cannot get "On Ebay", on the new album 'un' by Chumbawamba, out of my system. I catch myself humming it constantly. But beneath the stirring tunes lie serious intentions. The song is a critical remark on how the US deals with the situation in Iraq. It can also be seen as a concern for the risk of finding Iraqi treasures on Ebay.

"Stuff happens, freedom’s untidy and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of this stuff cropped up for sale on Ebay at the weekend.", band member Alice says in an interview on rock-city.co.uk (where the reporter repeteadly misspells the name of the band). Well, let's hope that her misgivings don't turn out to be justfied.

And while I'm at it, I'll recommend a great band, though of a less political nature than Chumbawamba: Nightwish and their new album Once. Superb!

Blog struggle

One can find interesting stuff at the bottom of one's drawer. Last night, I found an article I wrote last summer, while working as a news reporter at the local newspaper. It's about a blogger and his three different blogs in three languages. I can't help smiling when reading as the birth of the article comes to mind. I had been trying to evoke an interest in blogging as a news worthy topic amongst my colleagues for quite some time. Some agreed with me that it was something worth writing about, but my idea never made it to the top priority-list. But one day, in the midst of August, I managed to get an interview with this blogger and the editors didn't decline. I was thrilled to bits, and he seemed pleased too.

The blogger, Panu Petteri Höglund, states in the interview: "The weblogs cannot replace newspapers but I can well imagine that they will become an important channel for recruiting journalists and columnists. There will probably be a vivid collaboration between the weblogs and the newspapers. The boundaries between them are becoming less fixed.".

More on the collaboration between these two actors here.

Midsummer feast

I'm off to celebrate Midsummer now, which means that the blog won't be updated in a couple of days.

For those of you who are not familiar with this celebration of summer solstice (the photo above is taken at 00.30 a.m.), one crucial thing to know about it is that love is strongly connected with Midsummer. Since the Midsummer night is magic, a woman can see her future husband in her dreams. Where I come from, girls pick seven different kinds of wild flowers, during complete silence, and sleep with the flowers under the pillow. The husband to be will appear in their dream.

When I was younger, I faithfully undertook this procedure. The hope of getting a glimpse of my future husband remained, until the year I dreamt of Donald Duck. Nonetheless, there's no need for such methods anymore :)

Glad midsommar!

Just another manic Monday

Even though First Monday was born in May 1996, I've never heard of this peer-reviewed journal on the Internet. Perhaps the fact that I hate Mondays has something to do with it.

Anyhows, the journal's solely devoted to the Internet and the global information infrastructure. In the current issue, David Huffaker discusses the role of weblogs in class room settings. "Weblogs provide an excellent opportunity for educators to advance literacy through storytelling and dialogue", he concludes.

Backlash?

Anne Beaulieu, a senior researcher with Networked Research and Digital Information at Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, writes about blogs as fields for ethnographic work (Meditating Ethnography: objectivity and the making of ethnographies of the internet. Forthcoming 2004).

In the section about blogs, she refers to the paper on weblogs by Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker and states that the blog is experienced as "a context and a mode of communication, a hybrid tool for making, presenting and reflecting on the object that is furthermore exposed in a new way.".

But this part in Beaulieu's paper fascinates me the most: "The informality of this mode of writing, researching and communicating has been the object of backlash in some academic circles (though none, as far as I could tell, were ethnographic), and some scholars have reported that their blogging activities were considered too ‘journalistic’ by their peers (Glenn 2003). These protests may be signs of changing values in the wake of novel forms of scientific communication."


If some consider blogs to be a backlash today, what will the opinions be in a couple of years? And what will the role of the blog, when it comes to academic research, be? Blogging has in fact already matured from link-driven sites to moblogs, hobby weblogs, diary weblogs and some weblogs focus on one single matter. And within a short period of time, too. But what about the role of the blog in academia: will the scientific communication develop in unexpected ways, or will the claimed backlash continue? I definitely hope Beaulieu is right when saying that the criticism may be a sign of changing values in academic communication.

"Serial blog murder"

Blogging pioneer Dave Winer suddenly closed his free blog-hosting service, Weblogs.com , a couple of days ago. Some bloggers got upset when denied access to their blogs, others took the news more calmly.

Sometimes I've questioned the idea of keeping one's research memos, collection of links etc on a free blog-hosting service, like I do. Can I expect any guarantees that my blog won't be shut down? And what if it is, how will I feel about it?

Naturally, this is not the only place where I store my thoughts and links to papers etc, still I think I'd better update the back up of the content in this blog, just in case...

"The net is only halfway"

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was yesterday granted the recently founded Millennium Technology Prize in Finland. This means that the founder of the web is a one million euro richer man today.

According to the Swedish newspaper in Finland Hufvudstadsbladet, he says that the net is only halfway.

"The net is nowadays seen, or should be seen, as a helper when one wants to do other things. It should be working without us noticing it. The time has past, I hope, when people surfed the net just for the sake of surfing."

According to the article, Berners-Lee condemns the hardware centered attitude that shines through certain programs, and he also dislikes proprietary software. "The most important is the information that people share. The rules regarding how you share this information must be general enough, in order to prevent that you're tied to a certain program or hardware. Hardware must not become an obstacle."

For those of you who are not familiar with the Millennium Technology Prize: it is the largest technology prize in the world. The prize money is donated by the state and private sponsors. The prize will from now on be awarded every other year to a prominent person within technology.

Addicted to computers?

Therese lists three things that might indicate too heavy usage of computers and she hopes for some computer free time.

Unintentionally, my house has been computer free these last four, five days. Last Friday, we were too fed up with the noise the fan in our computer made so we decided to get a new, better one. And after the installation of the fan, it was quiet alright. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. So, we rushed to a computer pundit, pleading for a quick antidote.

I was sure I wouldn’t survive the weekend without my combined radio-tv-newspaper- calender-archive. But I did, brilliantly. I don’t miss it all that much. I check my e-mail and read the latest news headlines at work, that’s enough. And this morning, I was told that my computer is cured and I can pick it up. It is late afternoon now and I still haven’t. I figure I’ll go tomorrow, and catch a movie tonight instead. The book, Girl with a Pearl Earring, was quite ok so I’m eager to see the cinema version of the story.

I love to hate it

I love page design! I love to edit, do layout and think of creative, unconventional ways to present text, photos or figures.

A couple of summers ago, I worked as a journalist at a newspaper. Up until then, PageMaker had been my little helper but now, I had the opportunity to work with the layout program InDesign. I enjoyed it and sometimes I miss those times when playing with colors was actually paid work!

As I do now, when I’m editing a bunch of SPSS charts and text blocs in a Word-document. A reason as good as any to go nuts! I’m not a member of the Word Fan club and now I get a reason to dislike this witty software even more. But if this Master’s thesis of mine is ever going to be published, my struggle must continue.

Intertwingled communities of interest

A couple of reflections on the peer reviewed paper on weblogs, written by Edmonds, Blustein and Turnbull. The authors believe that, in the future, everyone will use tools derived from the blogs to structure, search and share personal information, but also to engage in shared discussion.

I'm not saying that they are too optimistic but some facts cross my mind when I read this. The informants in my study (20-29-year olds) are very keen on ICT:s as 85 % claim they wouldn't want to live without the Internet. However, they proved quite sceptical to sharing personal information on the net. Three out of four,and especially women, consider it dangerous to share personal information. Of course, this is not the same as sharing links and information on one's interest for example, but still.

"In our vision, people will be able to connect with huge, Web-scaled or small circle-of-friend groups who share a common interest." the authors write. I asked my informants whether they have discussed their interests in a fora or a chat and 74 % answered that they never have. And 72 % have never asked someone unknown on the Internet for advice. In this study, I was interested in what Castells and Wellman write about the common interest replacing the local as a base for friendship and social relations. It turned out that most of my informants didn't have friends that they've met on the Internet and where a shared interest, and not a common time or space, is the base.