Posts from — March 2006

The Vinegar Institute – Uses & Tips:

Berry ink ingredients:
½ C. Ripe berries (blueberries, cherries, blackberries, strawberries, elderberries, raspberries, etc.)
½ Tsp. Vinegar
½ Tsp. Salt

Fill a strainer with the berries and hold it over a bowl. Using the rounded back of a wooden spoon, crush the berries against the strainer so that the berry juice strains into the bowl. Keep adding berries until most of their juice has been strained out and only pulp remains. Add the salt and vinegar to the berry juice. The vinegar helps the ink retain its color and the salt keeps it from getting too moldy. If the berry ink is too thick, add a tablespoon of water. Store in a baby food jar. Only make a small amount of berry ink at a time and, when not in use, keep it tightly covered.

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well…. if i ever need this to save civilization…. i probalby won’t have a blog, but the idea of home-made ink is nifty.

Presenters, Abstracts, and Papers:

Internet Research 7.0: Internet ConvergencesPresented by Association of Internet Researchers

Media Lab Madrid, together with David Cuartielles (Arduino), Casey Reas
(Processing), Zach Liebermann (Code Artist), and Hans C. Steiner
(PureData) are proud to present a two weeks project development workshop
to happen in Madrid – Spain between April 17 – 30, 2006.

Main goal to this workshop is to create projects including open source
technologies in an open source way. All the pieces will be then exhibited
for -at least- another three weeks, and then will be toured through
different venues. So far already two festivals to happen before the summer
2006 have manifested their interest in getting this work.

The workshop is fully financed by Media Lab Madrid and the Centro Cultural
Conde Duque. You only have to take care of your transportation +
accomodation in the area.

For more information and downloading the application forms, please check
the following web-sites:

- http://www.interactivos.org

- http://www.medialabmadrid.org
<p>——–<p>
i wish i could go to this, but i’m teaching this semester, so i can’t spare two weeks.

Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society :

On Monday, April 24, 2006, the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society is sponsoring “Representations of Race and the African American Community.” This interactive event is designed to connect members of the Virginia Tech campus and surrounding communities through a day-long series of conversations including a lunchtime poster session and opportunities for small group dialogue.

The initial goal is to examine the way that race is represented in our personal, academic, and civic lives. By the end of the day, participants will be invited to explore possibilities for campus-community projects and partnerships aimed at improving the climate for racial relations and understanding.

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this should be a very interesting event, but they are limiting it to on campus.

http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/

please distribute this url widely, we’d love to have more submissions to send to review.

More dialogue with TMTTLT: Push back…:

We seem to be more in agreement than not.I’ll resist the slide from “computing devices” to “technology,” but probably nothing turns on that anyway. The laptops are valuable at least as much for their interactive, networking potential as for their other computing possibilities, maybe more. Plenty of people in the developed world benefit from Net access, and not because they’re becoming better prospects to attend MIT. That brain-drain argument seems to be a red herring.

Do you give fish or teach to fish? Of course, you teach to fish given the live option, but not while at the same time denying your students fishing tools.

What’s wrong with those other two positions is that they deliberately exclude the developing world.

—–

yes, generally we are in agreement. my concern with the brain drain is one of dependence economies, they create less opportunities for the less able and immense opportunities for the most talented. the question becomes again ‘who benefits’ but i’m thinking at the state scale in that framework.

it might be best to exclude the developing world from objects like laptops though. that’s the idea, perhaps there are better informational tools and it is better for them to develop the appropriate technologies for their own use than to follow the paradigm of one laptop per child. no?

aristotle argued that potential good is not real good. we’ll only know if this is real good if it is studied and there is no plan in place for that.

why is bill gates right in this case, in my opinion? because he has been to africa and most of the rest of the developing world and has put in place a solid development regime based on healthcare, nutrition, libraries and education. In short, he is building real social infrastructure. he isn’t dropping 2million laptops in, which he could, because he has consulted with development specialists and has seen what becomes of western technics in the places that might not value them similar to us. laptops aren’t sustainable in most environments, and this laptop is not that different in the end. my problem is that this laptop is actually taking money away from other infrastructures (because the nations) and that it will be a short lived object at best. I think Gates sees this too and that is why he chose to go a different way.

Axess, a magazine for the liberal arts and social sciences:

REGULATED SEXUALITY | Some Muslim women feel that the veil provides dignity and protection, but I found it controlling my inner life, even after I stopped wearing one.

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This is an interesting article that posits some of the mental effects of veiling women.

when one realizes the situationist word derive is the same as drift… kristeva makes more sense…

Push back on my take: Gates…:

I got the support issues the first time. Yes. But it#039s not as though those are issues for and only for the $100-laptop crowd. Those are issues for bringing most of the world into network society — or allowing for the creation of network societies for most of the world (since the process need not be one of assimilation or hegemony). Anyone who thinks it would be good for very many kids in the developing world to have access to computing technology, and anyone who thinks it would be good for very many kids in the developing world to have access to the Net, faces those support issues.

So, if the support issues counter-argue, as it were, it can#039t be that they counter-argue just the $100-laptop project. The thrust of the objection might be one of these:

it#039s a mistake to design hardware; the $100-laptop crowd should design support, or education, or
kids in the developing world shouldn#039t have computing devices, or
kids in the developing world shouldn#039t have a place in the Net.
But does TMTTLT advocate any of those? Surely not the latter two. Maybe the first? But that you need both hardware and education doesn#039t argue for the priority of the two or any particular division of labor.

Hence, my take: it may be both a publicity stunt and a good idea.

it isn#039t a mistake to design the hardware… but it might be. it depends on many factors, what is the political economy behind the model here? is it that each child will benefit? how? and what will ensure that? would it be better to take the same money and say, pay for a generation of teachers, that would then teach another generation of teachers? is the design of a technology always a good decision in the contexts in which it serves? When i look at the laptop, i try to think of it as something that dropped from the sky that i have no access to beyond say a 20 minute class. think of it as alien technology, you have no cultural access to it. is the laptop what you would design? does it make sense? what about the builders honest evaluation that they need to have two or three design break throughs before it becomes a reality, in short… we can#039t build a $100 laptop now…? so is it a mistake to invest in this development? when resources are perhaps better spent on something that would build and sustain a people#039s capacity? perhaps. I see this laptop as a cultured object, it makes sense to the west and people educated in the west. Every bit of research that I#039ve seen though indicates that this development model does not work.

Should kids have access to technology? the data that I#039ve seen is inconclusive on this subject. that data is primarily in the developed world where students are immersed in educational institutions. so i don#039t know. access to technology is not a universal good in my book. technology is but one of many ways of gaining elements of a good life, but it doesn#039t provide for a good life and it doesn#039t guarantee anything. I don#039t think that there is any real reason to suspect that that anyone would necessarily be in a better position after the $100 laptop, but… since there is no tracking studies, there is no way to know. I#039m much happier say with the ideas behind Atoms and Bits http://fab.cba.mit.edu/ where you teach kids how to build things with advanced manufacturing technology, so they could build what they need, than i am with the #039give them a laptop#039 idea.

as for a place on the net… i think that the net should be opt in. if there becomes a point in your life where you need the net, then yes you should be able to use it. but there are probably many people in the world that will never need or use it. the net or net access isn#039t a necessary good either, many people assume it is, that is a popular ideological position, but alas, the net could go away and be replaced with other technologies with different purposes, perhaps more focused and less generalized. it is not that i do not think they should have access, it is that i think that access to the net comes somewhere after you teach someone to read in its current stage.

I do not really see what#039s wrong with the latter two positions that you state above. do you give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or do you teach the man to fish? do you give a person a laptop that is already outdated and hard to use, or do you teach them how to make their own things.

the political economy that i see driving this is economic dependence and thus paternalism. we think we know what is right for someone and thus we are going to give them that thing, but that thing is not necessarily what they need, nor is it even necessarily valued. what happens if the people do not place value in the $100 laptop? what happens if they do not see it as a good or productive device?

the counter argument is if the laptop reaches the next einstein that would be a great thing right? to what end, to give that einstein the cultural tools to participate in whose culture? ours, so the laptop is cultural imperialism? or isn#039t it? is this thing a way of training and detecting the best and the brightest so that the MIT#039s of the world then have access to them, braindrain wise?

like i said,i like the fab central idea much more, teach them how to build their own laptops and give them the capacity to do that. in short, build capacities in the world, don#039t build things.

so my basic take is:

*there are better ways to spend money

*the outcomes are indeterminate with no plans of determination

*the purpose behind the laptop is unclear

*the idea of a laptop in its cultural context might not translate and if it does translate is it appropriate?

*what is the political economy of this? who does it govern, benefit?

*is it appropriate design, what are the values in the design?

*are the norms of a laptop the right norms? for whom?

INTERNATIONAL LOW-RESIDENCY MFA PROGRAM INVITES APPLICATIONS
Transart Institute invites applications to its interdisciplinary MFA in New Media program. Students create their own course of study working on art and research projects off-site with the support of faculty and self-chosen artist mentors. The independent study is complemented by three intensive summer residencies where lectures, critiques, seminars, performances, exhibitions, and workshops take place on-site in Europe. The low-residency format permits continuing a professional life while participating in the program. Main goals of the program are: Change and the development of a sustainable artistic praxis. Twelve scholarships available. Application deadline: April 1, 2006.
http://www.transartinstitute.org