Archive: The Gnovis Blog
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Thesis Blog: Choosing a Topic
When I arrived on the coast of Maine last Saturday, I had little of note but a comic book, a pad of paper, a short writing workbook, and a fierce determination to make some measurable amount (any measurable amount) of progress towards choosing a topic for my thesis. Imagine my surprise when I arrived home Tuesday afternoon with not only a soft tan, but also a fully articulated — and completely viable– thesis proposal. Sans lit review, of course.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Activist Diaspora: From the Mall to the Internet
The way political protests -- and particularly anti-war movements -- have been shaped, organized and perceived over the last 30 years has changed significantly with advances in information and com
Categories: 2008, The Gnovis Blog
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The Naked Machine is Upon Us . . .
A few days ago I was asked about the new full-body scanners that are being used at several airports, including BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). I’m a little embarrased to admit that, though I knew the scanners were being used, I didn’t know the details. After all, one of the core readings in the CCT program (during my 1st year here, at least), was Jeffrey Rosen’s "The Naked Crowd," and these new scanners are exactly what Rosen referred to as The Naked Machine.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Collective Nostalgia meets Religious Fundamentalism
I have long had a vaguely secretive fascination with what I’m going to call, in this post, "collective nostalgia," though I am often more inclined to call it "false nostalgia," emphasizing that the object of this nostalgia is generally something imaginary.
To scholars of nationalism and nation building, this concept is quite familiar, in principle if not in name — the public memory that underlies national histories is characterized by a collective memory (and collective forgetting) that is selective, essentialized, and at times imagined.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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A Cure for Information Overload: Detox and Blogging
I’ve been pretty absent from this forum for the past few months. This has nothing to do with my feelings for gnovis or its awesome new issue. It has been because, well…
I am an Internet addict. In the past year or so my Internet use has gone from a nice distraction in an office job to something that has stopped my own creativity.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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How Does Technology Impact Young Adults' Writing Habits?
At the Pew Internet and American Life Project, we recently published a report titled Writing, Technology and Teens , which considered the impact of informal writing styles, as commonly found in the infinite number of shorthand conversations young people have each day over text messaging and IM. The primary question we wanted to answer with this research was if these informal writing styles, which make liberal use of writing shortcuts such as acronyms (e.g., LOL, ROFL, BRB, etc.); abbreviations (e.g., "cu2nite", meaning "see you tonight"); and emoticons, such as the recently-turned-10-years-old smiley face, had any effects on teens’ more formal writing, such as what was required from them in a school environment.
As Nicole recently wrote , the results from this research reveal that while most teens do not consider these forms of interaction as "writing," the habits developed in quick messaging conversations do bleed into their more formal, school-based writing. Since I considered the communication habits of college students for my master’s thesis work, I thought it might be interesting to look at the questions posed in our teens’ research in light of my data on a slightly older crowd. Below is a cross-post that I have also published on Pew’s website; the original post can be found here.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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"Big T, little t" – Thoughts on Technology Skills in Technology Studies
Here in Georgetown’s Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) program, the students have informally divided themselves into CCT ("CC-Big-T") and CCt ("CC-little-t"). The implication, for the benefit of outside readers, is that some of us, the little-t’s, while comfortable working with theories of technology, are not comfortable working with technology itself. There is, without trivializing a very important term, a digital divide in our midst.
Category: The Gnovis Blog
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Texting Affects Student Writing: R U Concerned?
"There is a raging national debate about the state of writing and how
high-tech communication by teens might be affecting their ability to
think and write…. Those on both sides of the issue will see supporting data
here."Category: The Gnovis Blog
Hils-steria: Displaced Corporeality and Fractured Feminine Identities
“The question is, How do you become a universal figure when you
represent movements that have claimed the right of equality for you in
your difference?” –Joan ScottCategory: The Gnovis Blog
OBEY Andre On Its Face: Theory and Praxis
I hate to exhaust the topic. It’s not always All-Shepard-Fairey-All-the-Time here at gnovis. But Jed’s comment helped a lot in refining my thoughts, which were admittedly unclear as I worked through some tangles. And aside from fostering more healthy dialogue on the blog, I think exploring these knotty but not impenetrable questions of interpretation that are relevant to a lot of CCT work could be fruitful.
Category: The Gnovis Blog