Archive: The Gnovis Blog
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Weekly Roundup: Blog Picks for September 19, 2008
The debate between technophiles and technophobes rages on this week. From the CCT blogosphere, read two positive
reports on the impact of gaming on children and education. Compare these with the The Chronicle Review’s latest report that on-line reading is of a
lesser kind.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Hypothesis Based vs. Grounded Theory
I don’t have an academic background in theory. My undergraduate degree was in international business at a practice-oriented university where the only primary texts I was ever required to read were annual reports. Learning how to manipulate theory was and remains one of the reasons I chose CCT. But the application of theory, as any other tool, is continually evolving which makes mastering it that much more difficult.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Why We Blog, Part 4 of 4: Personal Obligation
Telenovelas, first dates, and fertile ground — everyone has their own relationship with this defined, yet far from settled, medium. Justin Hall , often considered the first blogger, probably had no clue what he was on to when he first started coding his diary into HTML. The personal journal remains one of the most popular forms of individual blogging , but political, technical, l and news aggregate blogs have entirely reshaped the boundaries and potentials of self-publishing.
So what then is an academic blog? And what does it mean to be an "academic blogger"? Definitions are problematic. When I look through my blog subscriptions in Google Reader for some model to follow, the topics and purposes are as divergent as the titles.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Why We Blog, Part 3 of 4: Intellectual Coffee Talk
Margarita, in her contribution to this series, likened her
blogging history with telenovela. Since this is my first blog, my relationship
with blogging is more like a first date. I’m excited and eager to make a good
impression, nervous but trying to sound as relaxed as I can in my perpetual
state of over-caffeination. I’m sure at
some point well meaning friends offered the same advice to prepare me for both
activities – just be yourself.Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Why We Blog, Part 2 of 4: Why I (normally don’t) blog (and 3 reasons why it will be different this time)
My blog history is best compared to a telenovela. Passionate beginnings followed by drawn out break-ups. Promises of commitment interrupted by threats of abandonment. Short-lived reunions interspersed with long spells of neglect.
Starting with my first blog in my sophomore year of college, I spent five years switching from one blog service to another, hoping that a change in applications would lead to a change in habit – I was the bad craftsman blaming my tools.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Why We Blog, Part 1 of 4: The gnovis Blog, Past and Future
It’s been just over a year since I wrote the very first gnovis blog entry, "Making the Case for a gnovis Blog," in which I argued that academic blogging offers, for both readers and writers, an opportunity to narrow the gap between pure critical theory and contemporary "real world" issues. While I’ll still happily defend that particular argument, my own views on academic blogging have become considerably more nuanced.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Denver Gets a Creative Splatter
There’s been some chatter about the lack of protests at the Democratic Convention (though, as I write this Biden is going on and on about an "open convention"). While there may not be a tremendous number of people waving signs, there is a lot of street art in Denver right now focused on the DNC and Obama. A lot, but not all, of this art seems like an off shoot of the Manifest Hope show.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Eulogizing Theory
How does one produce truth? This summer I have put the finishing touches on a chapter about anonymity, identity and craigslist Missed Connections. I have now spent about a year studying how people use and abuse this potentially unintended social space (you can see the beginning of this journey here on gnovis), and (if I do say so myself) have some good ideas. In just a matter of days I will have completed my grand theory. But it’s just a theory, and according to Chris Anderson’s recent Wired article , despite my supporting data, it’s just as passe.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Soledad, Solidarity, Sexuality: Black Men and Women In America
CNN’s recent in-depth investigative piece, Black in America , explores contemporary race issues, and the various challenges and achievements among blacks in the U.S., presenting a hard-hitting depiction of the frustrations among black
Americans who consistently face prejudice because they are
racialized as black.Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Book Review: Cult of the Amateur
A dear friend handed me Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, and proclaimed it "the worst book in the universe." Intrigued, I
decided I had to sample a chapter or two. [Coincidentally, the paperback edition was released today.]Category: The Gnovis Blog