Tuesday, July 27, 2004

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.

Monday, July 26, 2004

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]

Friday, July 23, 2004

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.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

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.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

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.



Tuesday, July 20, 2004

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.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

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.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

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?

Thursday, July 08, 2004

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.

Monday, July 05, 2004

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.