Presenting
For several years now, I’ve used reveal.js to build slide decks for my presentations. The primary appeal has been the ability to write new talks in Markdown ...
Posts by Year
- 2023 3
- 2022 17
- 2021 8
- 2020 18
- 2019 28
- 2018 81
- 2017 9
- 2016 8
- 2015 24
- 2014 11
- 2013 20
- 2012 51
- 2011 33
- 2010 89
- 2009 79
- 2008 151
- 2007 147
- 2006 240
- 2005 293
- 2004 220
- 2003 158
- 2002 48
2023
Static
Over the holiday break, I did a lot of work to migrate my 20-year-old blog out of WordPress and into the Jekyll/GitHub configuration you see here. It was bot...
MLA 2023
I’m a little late in getting this posted, but I delivered the paper below at MLA 2023 as part of a session entitled “How the Liberal Arts Works,” organized b...
2022
Comments
Building the new, but trying not to leave the old behind.
Hello World!
Testing out Jekyll and making wayyyy more than minimal mistakes.
Hotel Elsevier
You’ve already heard that Elsevier is evil. That they know this much about you — and that they are selling this data not just to our institutions but to god-...
Birdsite
Spending today tinkering with a combination of ideas that have surfaced in my Mastodon feed over the last several days:
Tasks Matter
At some point in the last couple of weeks, a link passed through my hcommons.social feed pointing me to Ben Newton’s post on task-tracking in Obsidian. I loo...
Revising
This morning, I am officially kicking off the process of revising Leading Generously for final submission. As the discussions there will show, I’ve got a lot...
Block Editor Question
WP block editor gurus: Is there a way to use styles to create links that use different colors for the link text and the link decoration (i.e., the underline)...
García Peña, Community as Rebellion
Grounded in a model of individual success that rewards white men and the knowledge they have created for centuries, academia promotes competitiveness, exc...
ActivityPub
Some time back, I got sooooooper-interested in the work of IndieWeb and what it might do for connecting blog spaces and social media spaces. Things have quie...
Timeline of Events
For anyone who might be looking for a bit more information on the situation at MSU, faculty senator Jack Lipton has put together an excellent video detailing...
A Tale of Two Transitions
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Krenak, Ideas to Postpone the End of the World
My main reason for postponing the end of the world is so we’ve always got time for one more story. If we can make time for that, then we’ll be forever put...
Venticinque Anni Fa
Edited to add: Uh, whoops. Try Trentacinque Anni Fa. I am OLD.
Revisiting Neoliberal Tools
I had the pleasure this morning of being part of an excellent townhall on digital American Studies held by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien. My a...
What Is This Meeting For?
I’ve had two ridiculously awesome work events in the last two days, and want to share them with you, because in some ways the excitement I have about them is...
#ENG818
Over the last several months, I’ve regularly bugged folks on the Twitters for suggestions for a new class I’ve been putting together for this semester, calle...
Plans
For the last several years, I’ve had a daily planning routine. While I’d begun that routine in the Moleskine that was always nearby, I moved it onto my compu...
2021
Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
I’m in the early pages of Jenn Shapland’s gorgeous My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, which brings the methods and subjects of literary criticism and biog...
In the Swim
Are there skills you developed as an adult that you enjoy enough that you wish you’d picked them up when you were younger?
Higher Education as a Social Good
A few days ago, I had the honor of keynoting the annual meeting of the APLU’s Commission on Economic and Community Engagement. The text of my talk is below.
New Books Network
I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to talk about Generous Thinking with Kai Wortman for the New Books Network.
Opening Up Peer Review
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak as part of a workshop held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the European Network for Cinema and Media Stud...
Focus
I’ve been wearing glasses with progressive lenses for a few years now, since it became clear that no form of contact lens-based correction was going to work ...
LG: Call for Respondents
Friends, in support of the revision process for Leading Generously, as well as my broader research into the conditions for creating transformative change wit...
LG11: Onward
I hope that your holidays were restorative and that your 2021 is beginning as well as it can. In addition to spending this morning getting myself rebooted fo...
2020
LG10: Solidarity
I’m taking a bit of a break from my official job-related duties this week, which is allowing me to think a bit about the path forward for Leading Generously....
LG9: Stories
Week 9 of Leading Generously; just a couple more to go. I hope you’ll send me any stories you’re willing to share.
LG8: Support
Part 8 of Leading Generously, already! Thanks to all of you who have liked and retweeted and commented. There are just a few more chapters ahead, and I’m sta...
LG7: Trust
This chapter of Leading Generously contains my first real TK TK TK — I’m not happy with how this section wraps up, in part because I’m not convinced the sect...
LG6: Values
Part 6 in this early draft of Leading Generously. This puts us a little over halfway through, so it seems a good moment to reiterate: what I most need in ord...
LG5: Vulnerability
Here’s part 5. And boy, do I feel this one. Looking forward to any thoughts or stories you’re willing to share. Please feel free to leave them in the comment...
LG4: Listening
This is the fourth in a series of eleven or so posts, opening up my in-progress project, Leading Generously. I’m posting this material at this highly drafty ...
LG3: People
Well, that was a week. Days of anxiously reloading every news outlet I could, followed by some precious hours of celebration and relief. And now… the fight c...
LG2: You
This is the second draft chapter of eleven-ish in *Leading Generously. See the overview and the first chapter for the story thus far.*
LG1: Introduction
This is the first chapter of what promises to be eleven in an in-development project, tentatively entitled Leading Generously. For more on why I’m posting th...
Leading Generously
This post is a heads-up of sorts; I’ve got a project I’ve been working on for a bit now, and I’m hoping y’all can help with it.
Retreat
Y’all. I found myself really needing to make some progress on a writing project. In order to do so, I needed to clear both my head and my schedule.
Urgency
From today’s campus coronavirus update: “News this week of a spike in positive COVID-19 cases in the East Lansing area highlight the importance and urgency o...
Your Institution Does Not Deserve to Survive
That is: unless you are committed to the survival of the people who make up and serve that institution first, foremost, and above all.
Generosity in Hard Times
Over the course of the last couple of years, I’ve spoken on several college and university campuses where faculty, staff, students, and administrators have b...
Isolation, Mission, Connection
The last month has been an utter blur. We traveled for spring break, which is on the early end of things here; we left Michigan in late February for a bit ov...
Infrastructure and Capacity Building
Crossposted from Platypus.
Becoming Human
This brief presentation was part of a panel at MLA 2020 in Seattle entitled “Being Human, Seeming Human.” The panel brought together researchers from Microso...
2019
Generosity, Humility, Vulnerability
A few conversations in recent days, as well as a bunch of the reading I did during my holiday writing retreat, have led me back to thinking about generosity....
Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists
Those of us who labor in academia have a responsibility and a role to play in the transformation of society, but we are not, and should never aspire to be...
Loss, Shame, Validation, and Work
This is likely to be a bit of a hike. It’s one of those posts in which some precipitating event has sent me off on a bit of an introspective tail-spin, and s...
Anodyne
Words come in and out of common usage, sure, but every once in a while I’m caught up short by repeatedly hearing a word that feels otherwise rare. Lately: “a...
Self-Assessment
A writer whose work I admire enormously tweeted the other day about the new book they’re working on and the joy they’re taking in it. Reading this tweet left...
Vanderbilt
I am enormously excited to be keynoting Humanities 20/20 at Vanderbilt this Friday, supporting the faculty’s development of a vision for the future of the hu...
Questions
I’ve been thinking this morning about the difference between Planned Obsolescence and Generous Thinking, and why the latter, and the response to it, means so...
Avatar
I turned 52 last week, and am not exactly sure how that happened. But it’s time for a new avatar that looks a bit more like the me I’m becoming than the me I...
EDUCAUSE Review
I don’t even know what to say about where this summer went. Things got done, but not the things I’d planned.
Horror
Before what’s below, I need to say something about the horror unfolding around us in El Paso and Dayton, and too too many other cities of late, though I hone...
Dewey, The Public and Its Problems
“The notion that intelligence is a personal endowment or personal attainment is the great conceit of the intellectual class, as that of the commercial cla...
We Have Never Been Social
Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with Bryan Alexander on his Future Trends Forum. We were primarily focused on Generous Thinking, but by way of havi...
Summer 2019
I’m titling this post “Summer 2019” in part as a way of reminding myself, as firmly as possible, that the summer has begun, in order to get myself focused on...
View
Not the worst view I’ve ever had from a hotel room window.
Dreams
Here’s how I know it’s almost summer: My dreams for the last nine months have been nothing but stress dreams. I’m at a conference and can’t find my way back ...
Soup
Did I seriously spend a full two seconds wondering what kind of vegetable soup comes in a box and what it was doing in my hotel bathroom? (Yes, yes I did.)
Something Weird
Something weird is happening to this tree.
Cohen Review
I’m enormously grateful to @dancohen for this most generous review of #GenerousThinking.
Scholars, It’s Time to Take Control of Your Online Communities
Crossposted from the Humanities Commons Team blog.
Carlson Interview
I’m grateful to have gotten to have such a good conversation with Scott Carlson of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Jaschik Interview
Scott Jaschik asked me some great questions about Generous Thinking, and I was happy to answer.
Listening as Generous Thinking
(Crossposted from the Johns Hopkins University Press blog.)
More on GT: Comments Reopened
The conclusion to the print edition of Generous Thinking directs readers to the manuscript’s open review site to share thoughts and ideas growing out of the ...
LAE Podcast
My dean Chris Long recently invited me to talk about Generous Thinking with him on his podcast, the Liberal Arts Endeavor. It was a great discussion, and I’m...
Behind the Will
I am honored that my colleagues in the College of Arts & Letters asked me to talk a bit about digital humanities and the role that it might play in reori...
Launch Week
It’s launch week for Generous Thinking! The book’s official ship date is tomorrow, and I’ve got several fun things in the pipeline to accompany it.
Eight Days
There’s one week and one day to go before Generous Thinking ships.
The Interface
Yesterday afternoon, I taught my first new class in almost nine years.
2018
That Report
That report? That had me terrified? I’ve been working steadily on it, and while I have a lot to go, I’ve turned the corner into being SUPER EXCITED about whe...
The Report
I’m working on a big piece of writing that’s had me a bit paralyzed, both because there seem to be too many unknowns as yet and because the stakes of this pa...
ARC!
Eeeeeeee!
JHUP Catalog
Johns Hopkins UP’s higher ed catalog:
To Re-read
Adding to Things: a semi-annual reminder to re-read this blog post and its various links. Boy does four-years-ago me sound familiar.
more focus
Day 1 of my attempt to return to early-morning focus. It was challenging, but I’m hoping that it might help create some much needed clarity for the day (and ...
Focus
I’ve been having some difficulty getting myself to focus lately. Some of the scatteredness I feel is undoubtedly situational: I have traveled four of the las...
Voted
I drove to city hall this afternoon and turned in my absentee ballot. In doing so, I saved $0.80 in postage and paid $1.85 in parking. But considering the cr...
On Amazon
Hey, there’s a thing! On Amazon! About which I am excited! #generousthinking
Busy
Okay, if anybody knows what it is that my calendar says I’m “busy” with on November 28, do let me know.
Politics & Aesthetics of Obsolescence
I’m delighted to be in Minneapolis today and tomorrow for the Politics and Aesthetics of Obsolescence, sponsored by the Moving Image & Media Studies Grad...
Sliding
I am sliding back and forth between incandescent take-to-the-streets rage and bleak take-to-my-bed despair.
Rage
I am attempting to proofread this thing about generosity and the public good today, but there’s something interfering with my concentration. Call it my apopl...
Mercy
“What motivates otherwise ordinary people to abandon all pretense of mercy when faced with the abject need for it?” A story that is both horrifying, and horr...
In Production
I sat down this afternoon to force myself to write a blog post, as I haven’t been doing much in the way of writing of late, and am feeling a bit cramped beca...
Thundering Manichean Dumbassery
“Thundering Manichean dumbassery” is among the best phrases I have read in recent days.
cOAlition S
On 4 September 2018, 11 national research funding organisation, with the support of the European Commission including the European Research Council (ERC),...
Go, Copy Editors
I have just finished reviewing the copy edits on a forthcoming project and am moved to send a shout-out to the awesome copy editors of the world. It can be p...
15,000!
Last year, just about this time, Humanities Commons (@humcommons) received its 10,000th member. This morning, we hit 15,000. Come join this growing community...
1P 2FA
How did I miss that my beloved 1Password added 2FA capability over two years ago? Now that iOS 12 is apparently integrating with 1Password — well, I’m excite...
22 August 2018, 10:46
I hope these two are getting the band back together today.
MOAR NEWS PLS
This is the first time in I can’t remember when that I’ve sat in front of a browser refreshing over and over and thinking MOAR NEWS PLS.
On the Star System
One thing I didn’t note in today’s post: the star system has not only distorted the flow of resources through our institutions, but has also deformed our rel...
Stars
Two things that have me thinking this morning: First, the thread from Timothy Burke beginning here:
Aretha
She was absolutely everything.
Themes
Sigh. I am wrestling with a few problems here, which have me a bit stymied. The theme you currently see1 is a child theme of Independent Publisher 2, which i...
Under Construction
Imagine a little GIF of a caution sign displaying a man digging. Or a cute note asking you to forgive our dust. There’s a bit of renovation taking place arou...
micro.blog
Well, @Twitter has officially broken @Tweetbot, so I’m likely to be around there less. Look for me on micro.blog; I’m @kfitz there, too.
Looking Forward
Today started with a bang: two back-to-back meetings over coffee, each of which was filled with possibilities for extending some of the projects I’ve been wo...
Aside
At some point in the last few weeks I read a blog post about connecting the Aside format in WordPress to micro.blog in a way that includes the date/time as a...
Lexington
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Lexington for the Transylvania Seminar: fantastic conversations about the principles and practices of liberal education; g...
Liberal Education
This has been a rough week: some serious disappointments and a lot of bureaucratic annoyances. But today I get to participate in a seminar on the history and...
Disappointment
It’s been a good-news-bad-news kinda day. I got word of two unsuccessful grant proposals, but I also got amazing comments on them: positive, supportive, enth...
Gitelman, Paper Knowledge
New tools become tenable only if the attendant social organization of labor changes in concert with the development of the tools, if adjustments are made ...
Preliminary Thoughts
So, trying this again: I posted a few preliminary thoughts this morning about the relationship between sustainability and solidarity. I’d love to hear your i...
Gutenberg
Word to the wise: Gutenberg, at least at the moment, does not permit writing in Markdown. Nor does it accept incoming Markdown from, say, micro.blog. Ask me ...
Sustainability and Solidarity
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about sustainability of late. To a significant extent, this thinking has been encouraged by my recent attempts to ensure that a...
Nights on Broadway
For the last week-plus, I’ve had The Bee Gees’ “Nights on Broadway” on repeat in my head. It’s not the worst earworm I’ve ever had, but it did finally drive ...
Feeds and Gardens tweet
From earlier today, thinking about RSS and cultivating community on the decentralized web: Feeds and Gardens.
Feeds and Gardens
My last post, Connections, gathered a fair bit of response — enough that you can see a good example of Webmentions in action below it. There’s a little back-...
Connections tweet
Earlier today, I did a bit of musing about the decentralized, distributed, and yet radically interconnected future that I hope scholarly communication might ...
Connections
One of the instigating factors in my recent migration from my original plannedobsolescence.net domain to kfitz.info, and in my attempts to collect and reinvi...
Insomnia tweet
I didn’t whine enough before, apparently, so I’m doing it now.
Insomnia
There are few complaints that make me feel whinier than does insomnia, but there’s at least a little bit of pleasure in the whining, because there are also f...
Insomnia
Insomnia is the worst. Woke up this morning at 1.52 and could not go back to sleep for anything. Finally got up and made coffee at 4.00. Tried to nap around ...
Modeling Clay
On Monday, I spent a chunk of the day thinking with smart folks in our Digital Scholarship Lab thinking about the collaborations we might inspire and support...
DSL
I’ve spent the day with some smart MSU folks thinking about our Digital Presence and Public Scholarship Initiative and the ways it might help encourage more ...
Webmentions
I’m experimenting with Webmentions and Semantic Linkbacks, at Chris Aldrich’s suggestion. Theoretically, if you reply to this post on micro.blog, the reply w...
Why Not Blog?
My friend Alan Jacobs, a key inspiration in my return (such as it is, so far) to blogging and RSS and a generally pre-Twitter/Facebook outlook on the scholar...
Sneaking in the back window
I have this far snuck into all three of my books (those published and those forthcoming) by the back window. I’m not sure why I’m surprised to find that the ...
Hope
This is what gives me hope for the future of the institution: “These three imperatives—to keep the lessons of our current crisis in front of us, to interroga...
Wrapping Up
Yesterday, I wrapped up the revisions on Generous Thinking, and I’m finding myself of very mixed minds about where I am today. On the one hand, I am super ex...
Home
After spending 14 of the last 18 days on the road, I am ecstatic to be sitting at the computer in my pajamas, finishing up some last edits on Generous Thinki...
PM
I went to bed at 8 last night, as I had to get up at 3 for a flight. When I woke up, my watch said 9:30, and I flipped out! Why hadn’t my alarm gone off? I’v...
Too Much
I have been quiet. Trying to imagine what I could say that could possibly make any sense whatsoever of the horrors around us. Trying not to start crying for ...
Conclusions
I hate conclusions.1 Okay, I don’t hate them. But writing them, and feeling like they’re doing anything like the work they need to be doing, ...
La plus rare et la plus pure
After yesterday’s search for the source of Simone Weil’s oft-quoted “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” went a bit Lot-49ish on me, I won...
Generosity and Attention
Among the reading I’ve picked up thanks to suggestions from the most generous readers of the draft of Generous Thinking is a bit of Simone Weil. Alan Jacobs,...
Recentering
The return home, post-vacation, presented its usual challenges, not least the fragmentation and scattering of my attention in a dozen directions. I am workin...
Mythical
I have somehow managed to achieve a state of vacation equilibrium that I previously thought mythical: Not a day too short. Not a day too long. Perfectly rest...
Bear
Our lake house, not incidentally, came with its own bear.
Reboot
Heading back home after an amazing two weeks spent writing and reading and staring at the lake. Just the fast reboot I needed to make the transition to summe...
Spring
We drove into this place on the northern coast of the Upper Peninsula two weeks ago tomorrow, and there was not a leaf to be found. Over the course of three ...
Media & Democracy Network
“The Media & Democracy Network aggregates & curates academic research, news, and opinion investigating the close relationship between media, technolo...
GDPR
I just got informed of a privacy policy update from a service I’ve never heard of. Is GDPR becoming a tactic for scammers?
Davis, Empathy Manifesto 1
From Jade E. Davis, Draft of Empathy Manifesto #1: “To be in the shoes of an Other still leaves you with your own feet.”
Sunset
It’s going to be hard to leave here.
Wambach
WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.
Micro
Okay, it appears that I’ve managed to get micro.blog posts connected to the aside post type and the micro category at kfitz.info, while ensuring that email s...
Markdown
A few immediate issues popped up in my micro experiment: markdown wasn’t enabled on the blog so posts there were, well, in markdown. And I’ve had to add a fi...
Lake
I’ve gotten to spend the last week-plus in a house on the shore of a lake far from nearly all demands other than revising Generous Thinking. It’s been blissf...
Aside
Thanks to @ayjay, I’m testing out micro.blog, linking the “aside” post type here and — if all goes well — eventually to twitter dot com as well. I’ve been wo...
On Generosity and Obligation
I am returning, at last, to the thoughts I was exploring in my recent posts on Miranda Joseph’s Against the Romance of Community (post 1 ...
Writing Is Hard
And then there are the mornings when I can spend two hours trying to untangle the logic in a single paragraph. I’ll grant that the thing I’m trying to say is...
Reading, Anxiety, Possibility
Every so often you come across That Book, the exact thing you need to read, and a lot of the time it’s something that you might not have run into before and ...
Strategy and Solidarity
As I noted in my last post, I recently read Miranda Joseph’s Against the Romance of Community as a means of thinking a bit more deeply about the ways that Ge...
Community, Privatization, Efficiency
Thanks to a recommendation from Danica Savonick, I’ve been reading Miranda Joseph’s Against the Romance of Community. Danica pointed me toward it as a correc...
What's New
Over the last couple of months, I opened Generous Thinking to a community review process at Humanities Commons. I am thrilled with how the discussion went an...
In Revision
Yesterday morning, I closed comments on the open review of Generous Thinking. I’m enormously grateful to everyone who took the time to read and give me feedb...
Community Review
In my last book, Planned Obsolescence, I argued for the potentials of open, peer-to-peer review as a means of shedding some light on the otherwise often hidd...
Chaos or Community
“In the book Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, Martin Luther King, Jr. told the citizens of this nation, with prophetic insight, that we would...
2017
On Developing Networked Communities
I dropped what a friend of mine referred to as a “Twitter bomb” this morning, spurred on by a question raised by Tim Hutchings:
The Commons and the Common Good
Earlier this week, I took a whirlwind trip back to my old New York stomping grounds, where I both had the opportunity to catch up with my colleagues at the M...
Parting Gifts
Today marks the start of my last week working at the MLA. It’s been a fantastic six years, and I’m enormously grateful to have had the opportunity to work on...
Sustainability
As we’ve just announced, the MLA is grateful to have received a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of the next phase of our work ...
Next Steps
Six years ago, I had the privilege of joining the staff of the Modern Language Association as Director of Scholarly Communication. My goal was to help the as...
Things I Have Learned from Other People’s Use of My Email Address
Kevin Fitzpatrick’s monthly AT&T Wireless bill is creeping higher month by month, and unless he’s got family members on his account, he should probably s...
Murkier and Unknown
“To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always declared itself and turning toward so...
Reading, Privacy, and Scholarly Networks
Sarah Bond published a column on Forbes.com this morning on the importance of not for profit scholarly networks. I’m thrilled that she mentioned not only my ...
Hard, Awful Things
“You know, the question isn’t whether we’re going to have to do hard, awful things, because we are. We all are. The question is whether we have to do them...
2016
Moving Forward
For the last week, I have been less than a page away from finishing a draft of the chapter on reading (see the overview for more on that), but found myself u...
This Morning
I am wanting desperately to find some still place to regroup, but I have to keep moving: I have to pack and get myself to the airport and go home, where I ha...
Generous Thinking: Introduction
The text below is a revised version of a talk I gave at the University of Richmond this spring. It’s the first bit of writing toward my very much in-process ...
Generous Thinking: The University and the Public Good
I have been working — painfully slowly, but nonetheless working — on a new project for something that is showing every sign of turning into a book. I’m still...
Not-Running
Over the years, I’ve posted a lot here about running, from chronicling my marathon training to pondering my deep ambivalence (if not flat out reluctance) abo...
Starting Again, Again
I have been working for the last year-ish on a new long-form writing project. The project is proceeding slowly, mostly because of time limitations.1 But it i...
Tinkering
I’ve just finished a bit of tinkering around here. I’m hoping, of course, that the desire to tinker might signal an imminent desire to actually write new thi...
Meta
I have just had one of those moments in which writing about the reasons I’m having trouble writing the thing I’m trying to write just made the thing I’m tryi...
2015
Academia, Not Edu
Last week’s close attention to open access, its development, its present state, and its potential futures, surfaced not only the importance for both the indi...
Opening Up Open Access
It’s Open Access Week, and as befits the occasion, I’m starting it this morning by thinking about what we’ve accomplished, what obstacles we’ve found — or ev...
The NEH at 50
The National Endowment for the Humanities is celebrating its 50th anniversary today. I’m joining many scholars, writers, filmmakers, educators, and countless...
On Women’s Pain
We cannot normalize women’s pain as acceptable collateral damage. Lili Loofbourow, “Planned Parenthood Saved My Vagina”
The Political Economics of Open Access
Oh, this this this:
Boehner
Seriously, I’m trying to make sure I’m reading this right. Is John Boehner being forced out of Congress for not shutting the government down enough? Because ...
Stalked by Suicide
“[A]t about the 10th, I started feeling as if it was inevitable — that it is going to get us all and there is nothing we could do to stop it.” —“In Uni...
Recalibration
Today has been a day filled with making progress on a slew of different writing projects, adding a paragraph to this one, reviewing some comments on that one...
E != Audio
Please, please, please, somebody tell me that iTunes 12.3 undoes the certainty with which 12.2 decided that about half of my e-books were #actually audiobook...
Pretty Hurts
A gorgeous cover, and a beautiful video, from an a cappella group at JMU.
#HelpAhmedMake
I am utterly, utterly crushed by this story. What a way to destroy the inventive spirit not just in this kid, but in so many surrounding him. But some folks ...
Library of America
David Skinner’s fascinating history of the Library of America details both the slow path to overcoming ingrained resistance to the project (including then Li...
Running
This is another in a periodic series of updates in which I announce that I’m trying to work my way back into running a bit more regularly once again, and inv...
Why I Stay
I think now the greatest challenge to changing the system from within is changing the system within. Graduate education is the feeder for a kind of strong...
Vox Victorians
There are good and careful interpreters, and bad ones. Part of the job of the person who is in love with history is to recognize the difference. Rebecc...
Names
When I was in sixth grade, I decided that I hated the way that folks where I grew up pronounced my first name (think three syllables), so I convinced everyon...
Birthday Skype?
I logged in to Skype for a conference call yesterday afternoon and immediately received a message letting me know that it was the birthday of someone with wh...
Shhhh
Don’t let the thunderstorm know where I am.
PMLA
One of the added responsibilities that has come to me with my new position is serving as managing editor of PMLA. In that capacity, I work with our staff on ...
Untied
As a long-time Continental frequent flyer, I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear of the corruption investigation that has apparently brought down the hea...
Greed
I’m pretty sure that if I were driven by greed academic publishing is not the business I’d go into…. Alan Jacobs, “Academic Publishers and Greed”
Chicken
This, except with 2+ pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Four hours in the slow cooker, on high. Makes brilliant tacos.
What’s in My Bag
What refugees bring when they run for their lives.
Unquenchable
For many years, I lived with a diet Coke addiction. It wasn’t bad in terms of quantity, but it was serious in its regularity: it was hard for me to go a day ...
2014
Cultural Studies as an Alibi
I would rather talk about the problems of ethics, value, trust, hierarchy, and labor in academic life than use cultural studies as an alibi, one more time...
Communities
[Crossposted from The New York Academy of Medicine’s Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health, which has published a cluster of posts previewing ...
Must
There are the things you know you ought to do, that are hard to do, in part because the “ought to” of them is pretty abstract, especially when they are surro...
Attention
Yesterday was a lovely, quiet Saturday. I got up early, went through my morning routine, and then went for a walk in the park. I did laundry, I had lunch, I ...
Reluctant Is Just the Word
Boone captures something here that I really needed to have drilled into my head: that if I’m going to get over my recent dread w/r/t running, I probably need...
The Royal Society and the Profession of Knowledge
Philosophical writers vested much of their identities and reputations in their printed works, so that counterfeiting, abridgment, translation, and piracy ...
Mistakes in the Texts
Instead of trying to find mistakes in the texts, I suggest we take the point of view that our authors created these apparent “contradictions” in order to ...
Reading with the Grain
The most difficult implication of this idea is the need to outgrow our supposedly Benjaminian habits of reading against the grain — the phrase the functio...
Surfaces
I’m contemplating a new writing project, and as I often do in the early stages of such projects, I’m beginning by thinking about the surfaces on which I’m go...
Pulled Pork, The Remix
We are finally, finally, in the thick of spring — the sun is out, at least some of the time, and the windows are open, at least part of the day. And the abil...
Evolving Standards and Practices in Tenure and Promotion Reviews
The following is the text of a talk I gave last week at the University of North Texas’s Academic Leadership Workshop. I’m hoping to develop this further, and...
2013
Being Wrong
Intermittently over the last year, I’ve found myself fumbling around an idea about critical temporalities. That is: ideas keep moving, keep developing, even ...
Tools and Values
I’ve been writing a bit about peer review and its potential futures of late, an essay that’s been solicited for a forthcoming edited volume. Needless to say,...
Engage. Disengage. Repeat.
I believe that I have caught myself just this side of a major case of burnout.
I Am Not Blogging
This post is likely little more than a bit of ritual throat-clearing, designed to help me get past a stage in the trying-to-write-again process in which I si...
UGH.
I honestly don’t know what’s worse: that I never knew these lyrics at all until @Karnythia linked to them in the context of #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, or th...
On the Working Vacation
As I posted a while back, I’ve been on an extended European trip this summer, beginning with several conferences, followed by a pretty blissful four-week sti...
Get Me Rewrite!
Consider this a plea for help:
Eleven
I have once again missed my own anniversary. It turns out that June 18, the day I launched this summer’s adventure, was the day this blog turned 11.
Getting Back to (My Own) Work
One would think, this many years and books and articles into a writing career, that I might have solved the getting-started problem by now. Or if not the get...
Summer 2013
Having wrapped up a whirlwind spring, in which I successfully got through the craziness of buying an apartment in NYC, got myself more or less moved into it,...
What Happened?
[As many of you know, MediaCommons disappeared for a couple of days this week. It’s (almost entirely) back now, but we wanted to explain what happened, and t...
Cheese
Thanks to Matt Kirschenbaum’s English 668K at the University of Maryland, I have been alerted to the fact that searching for me on JSTOR brings up my very fi...
Dear Hosting Provider
Weirdly, when our team said “let’s upgrade our server” got a message saying “we’re going to upgrade your server,” we didn’t expect you to redirect our DNS en...
Running
I’ve had an on-and-off romance with running for nearly 20 years now. I came to it late; I hated running as a kid, and I avoided it as much as I could in high...
Doubts
It’s not easy to write or talk about doubts. The things we have doubts about are often precisely those things that are most important, both to us and to thos...
Future Publishing
Back in the late spring of last year, I participated in a panel discussion on the future of publishing in visual culture studies, as part of the Now! Visual ...
Productivity and Goofing Off
Lately I’ve found myself in one of those periods — perhaps we might refer to it as “my forties” — in which I’m so overwhelmed with the details involved in ju...
Disagreement
Tim McCormick posted an extremely interesting followup to my last post. If you haven’t read it, you should.
If You Can’t Say Anything Nice
Folks, we need to have a conversation. About Twitter. And generosity. And public shaming.
2012
More on That Word
This is in part an apology for having ranted and run yesterday; between the little project I’m trying to get launched in the next couple of weeks and a meeti...
“Neoliberal”
I have come to despise the term “neoliberal,” to the extent that I’d really like to see it stricken from academic vocabularies everywhere. It’s less that I h...
Feeling My Way Through
I find myself at one of those moments at which everything is great and yet nothing seems to be working exactly right. I’ve got an enormous deadline just ahea...
Moving On
I somewhat inadvertently made a big announcement via Twitter last night, and in so doing, as my friend Julie pointed out, sorta buried the lede. So here’s th...
Outward and Visible Signs
I have an idea I’m backing into writing about this morning as I stand on the subway platform, a thing that I’m thinking about as “A Theory of the Information...
Warming Up
What happened?
Out of the Habit
I find myself lately pretty continually dismayed by the frequency with which I have to acknowledge that I’ve lost my good habits. I’ve gotten out of the habi...
Advice on Academic Blogging, Tweeting, Whatever
Over the weekend, something hashtagged as #twittergate was making the rounds among the tweeps. I haven’t dug into the full history (though Adeline storyfied ...
Slow. Down.
I’m having one of those seasons already – one minute, it’s Labor Day, and the next, it’s almost October, and it’s not entirely clear what’s happened in the m...
Public Responsibility, Public Access
Occupy is back today, celebrating the first anniversary of S17 with Strike Debt, a movement meant to call attention to the unconscionable levels of debt that...
The Shape of Thought
I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been thinking about the next Big Project. I’ve been circling it for a while, trying to figure out what several of the various...
Making Room
I’ve just gotten back from a trip (about which, as I said on Twitter, I hope to be able to write soon) to find it pretty solidly fall around here. Less weath...
Multiple Calendar Query
Here’s a (rather long) question for the Google Calendar devotees out there:
Stuck
I find myself in that state again, in which I have a particular writing task — in this case a talk — with a pressing deadline, one that’s pressing enough tha...
Fall
Today we’ve got one of those glorious mornings in New York in which you begin to feel the first bits of fall in the air. The sun is up and the temperature an...
Time Zones
Though my focus in writing here for the last ten years has mostly been professional, I’ve never tried to pretend that this wasn’t a personal blog. (In fact, ...
45
Yesterday, as I noted then, was my birthday, and it was one that I was surprised to find myself a bit ambivalent about. I haven’t really felt bad about a bir...
You Will Never Get It All Done
The Chronicle’s ProfHacker and Inside Higher Ed’s GradHacker have this week collaborated on a series of posts about productivity apps and systems. I’m consta...
Train of Thought
The funniest part of yesterday’s post — at least it’s funny to me — is how it got written: on my iPhone, on the subway. I remembered yesterday that, back whe...
Last Season, on Planned Obsolescence
One key problem with the blog as a platform for serial scholarship is that it’s much too easy to find yourself interrupted, to lose a train of thought.
Reader Response, in Theory
In my last post, on blogs as serialized scholarship, I noted that a colleague of mine had posted a link to a prior post on Facebook, resulting in an interest...
Blogs as Serialized Scholarship
Over the last two installments of this series, I’ve thought a bit about the relationship between scholarship, seriality, and the unpopular, all of which thin...
The Unpopular
This post revolves around two jokes that I’ve heard of late, each of which has been stuck in my head since I heard it. The first joke, as I noted in part 1 o...
Not the Post I Want to Be Writing
This is, rather, a post for posting’s sake, a post attempting to get out of the way the things that are keeping me from writing the things I actually want to...
Showers of the World
I’ve been on the road for a little over two weeks now, across three countries and nine time zones, and while I have a host of more serious topics for discuss...
Ten
I nearly missed it. Again.
Open Review: A Study of Contexts and Practices
crossposted from MediaCommons:
Unpopular Seriality
Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a workshop on “Popular Seriality” put together by Jason Mittell, Frank Kelleter, and the Popular Seriality ...
Pynchonesque
I need to begin this post by thanking Julika Griem for inviting me on what I hope was only a first visit to Frankfurt’s Goethe Universität; it was a privileg...
Annals of Comment Spam
A few days back, I tweeted an amusing bit of comment spam I’d received that morning:
Ha.
In what universe did I think I was going to get any writing done on my flight?
Departure
This morning is filled with the millions of details required to get self and stuff out the door and on the road for the better part of seven weeks. It’s the ...
Astro-Sonic
A much-beloved aunt and uncle of mine who live not too far away from here, in a lovely suburban split-level they moved into — what? 45 years ago? — are prepa...
Spoilerz!
Dear major television scholar who appeared at the very top of my Facebook feed this morning, where I could not avoid you (and I think you know who you are): ...
Reviews of Planned Obsolescence
I’ve been prompted, at last, to update this blog’s about page to reflect more information about the book that shares its name, by the appearance this morning...
Elbow, Wrist, Fingers, Pen, Words
I’m at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute Annual Symposium today, which has been fascinating all the way around. Perhaps the most amazing part o...
Itinerary
I finally managed to purchase the last of my summer plane tickets yesterday.* I’ve got a bunch of travel coming up, most of it work-related, but part of it i...
Shamelessness
Collin published a fantastic post yesterday thinking through, among other things, love, writing, Roland Barthes, Etsy, and Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo. He’s had re...
I Has a Sad
I’ve just gone through and pruned my blogroll, taking a look to see who was still active (by a fairly generous definition, given my own lack of activity), wh...
Rearranging the Deck Chairs
Some months back, I got pharmahacked, which was a royal pain, needless to say, and which I took extremely personally. (Witness: I got hacked.) Part of what a...
Two Things
One super-depressing (not least for how close to home it hits):
Intention
A few weeks ago, as I wrote my last post about balance as not-falling, I very much had yoga on my mind; I’d gone with a friend a few weeks before that to the...
Placeholder
This is a post designed to see if I’ve managed to unbreak my RSS feed, such that Google Reader and other modes of subscribing to this blog will once again up...
A Constant Process of Not-Falling
The primary bit of awkwardness involved in not-blogging is the transition to once-again-blogging; there’s guilt and embarrassment, and an overwhelming need t...
Open Access at 10
I’m really happy (if mildly tired) to be writing from Budapest, where (like Cameron) I’m honored to participate in a meeting on the tenth anniversary of the ...
iBooks, Authoring, Education, and So Forth
A quick note: I had the opportunity to attend the Apple Education event today on behalf of ProfHacker, where I posted my reflections a bit later in the day.
Giving It Away: Sharing and the Future of Scholarly Communication
The last talk I gave at MLA 2012 was a keynote for the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, the text of which is below. I’d love any feedback you might ha...
Response to Stanley Fish
I’ve just posted the following response to Stanley Fish’s comments about my book; they should be up once they’re moderated through. In the interim, and for t...
Networking the Field
Hi, my name is Kathleen Fitzpatrick. You may remember me from such conventions as the MLA, and from articles such as hey holy cow Stanley Fish wrote a whole ...
mla12
It’s 4.25 am in Seattle, and I’m about to head to the airport, on my way home from MLA 2012. It was an amazing convention — I’ve rarely felt more energized a...
Happy New Year!
We began 2012 yesterday in keeping with tradition, by doing a lot of lying around and recovering. We’d had a late night, which was made doubly late by my dow...
2011
Lies, Damned Lies
The elevators in our office building have these little monitors built into them, on which are displayed random tidbits of pseudo-news and other glossy distra...
The Public Scholar’s Two Bodies
I started this blog as an assistant professor, under conditions that were never fully pseudonymous but were perhaps semi-veiled, at least by the fact that ve...
The Year in Review: Or, a Whole Lot of Thinking That Eventually Works Its Way Around to a Point
It wouldn’t be the holidays for me without some kind of emotional crisis, I fear; if it’s not a crisis impelled by too-intense familial contact (the kind in ...
Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful(ly Warm, for This Time of Year)
I’m in the midst of wrapping up a few last items in the office before heading home for the holidays. It’s a slightly odd feeling; this is the first time in a...
Adventures in Publishing Contracts
Some months back I received a contract from a Certain University Press for an article that I’ve got forthcoming in what’s going to be a super cool edited vol...
Open Peer Review: New Rule
New rule! From this moment forward, in anything claiming to be a “discussion” of open peer review, no one is allowed to refer to the Nature experiment as evi...
Today’s (Apparently) the Day
According to Amazon, at least: today is the day that Planned Obsolescence has been released!
Things I Am Writing Instead of Writing Blog Posts
Grant proposals! Reader’s reports. Email. (Oh dear lord, the email.) Letters of recommendation. Conference presentations.
Inside Higher Ed
And just to round out what has been a completely insane week, an article reviewing Planned Obsolescence, including an interview with me, is up this morning a...
Do the Risky Thing
I’ve got a new column up at the Chronicle this morning. This one’s been in the works for a bit, and I’m really happy to have it out in circulation, and to se...
This Is What’s Wrong with American Workmanship Today
I got my watch as a gift in the fall of 2001. The battery that was in it when I received it lasted a really long time — five years, perhaps. And then it died...
Program Committee
I’ve spent the last two days in a meeting of the MLA Program Committee, thinking about, among other issues, the future shape of the convention — the new kind...
Hey, Why the Silence?
So, you may have noticed that there’s a significant gap in the archives here, roughly corresponding with the summer. And you may have asked yourself, gee, is...
Upward, Carefully
After two days at the Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship meeting, I’m back in the office today, and am taking a few minutes to take stock of where I am and what ...
Sports Night
I started rewatching Sports Night on Netflix this week, and am finding myself amazed, first, at how well the show has held up, not to mention how well Josh C...
New Air
Two things I’m noticing about my lovely new MacBook Air (which replaced my 3.5 year old first-generation Air):
This Morning
I’m headed to Ithaka Sustainable Scholarship 2011 today and tomorrow. I’m taking advantage of the slightly delayed start by actually sitting in the Starbucks...
Rebuild, Rewrite, Redirect
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have heard me growling a bit over the last week or so about @#$%! SEO blackhats and their @#$%! pharmahack.
Enough
I’m in what amounts to the last couple of weeks of my sabbatical, and so am finding myself reflecting a bunch on the goals I’d set for myself at the beginnin...
Complexity
I’m in the midst of reading Dominick LaCapra’s History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory, as I revise my essay on David Foster Wallace, Infin...
Moves and Updates
The news is starting to make its way out there: I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be joining the Modern Language Association this July as the Director of Sc...
MediaCommons Receives Mellon Grant to Study Open Peer Review
[crossposted from MediaCommons.]
I Miss Blogging
I got myself caught this evening in a thing that happens to me here every so often: I’ll spot an intriguing post title in my “Five Years Ago” block and click...
The Never-Appeared
I’m thinking that I’m going to start a new publishing project around here, based around a cluster of essays that I’ve written for various collections that ha...
On Open Access Publishing
[The following article was originally published by the Society for Critical Exchange in January 2010; alas, that version has been overrun with spam comments,...
Day of DH 2011
I’m participating in the University of Alberta-sponsored Day of DH 2011 today, and so will be posting there (and here) about some of my digital humanities do...
More Than Mere Polyester Would Suggest
Earlier this year, I attended a conference at which I was given a really nice fleece jacket. Really nice.
The Disappearing Month
For the first time in the nearly nine-year history of this blog, I have failed to post here for an entire calendar month. There will forever be a gap where F...
Does Tenure Undermine Academic Freedom?
A compelling argument that it does, at See Also…, with a particularly interesting concluding suggestion:
<rant>
Things are getting a bit under my skin right now. Maybe it’s exhaustion; yesterday’s travel went as smoothly as it possibly could, with some real cushiness a...
Nothing to Be Done
We’re at the airport, on our way back to the US. Earlier this morning, as we were checking out of the hotel, I took one last look around the reception area, ...
Homeward Bound, At Least Sorta
Today’s our last full day in Dublin; tomorrow morning, we head to the airport to fly to Newark, where I’ll then kill three hours before hopping on another pl...
Twenty-Eleven
This is the first promptless morning I’ve spent in a month, and the freedom is almost a bit vertiginous. I sat here for an hour or so starting at the add-new...
2010
#reverb10, day 31: Core Story
At last, today’s final prompt:
#reverb10, day 30: Gift
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 29: Defining Moment
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 28: Achieve
Yesterday’s prompt:
On the Scholarly Press, the Manual of Style, and Intellectual Property
Stuart Shieber posted an interesting and troubling analysis a few days ago of the recommendations of the Chicago Manual of Style with respect to open access ...
#reverb10, day 27: Ordinary Joy
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 26: Soul Food
Today’s — hey, it may be the 27th where I am, but it’s still the 26th according to the server — prompt:
Soundtrack
One of the things that I find fascinating just about every time I travel around Europe is the music playing in the background in restaurants, bars, hotels, s...
#reverb10, day 25: Photo
Today’s prompt:
Christmas Eve in Prague
The Christmas market in Old Town Square has a smallish stage set up at one end; this stage is used throughout the Christmas season for performances of variou...
Among the Things We Saw Last Night
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#reverb10, day 24: Everything’s OK
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 23: New Name
Today’s (yay!) prompt:
#reverb10, day 22: Travel
Prompt the 22nd:
#reverb10, day 21: Future Self
Prompt the 21st:
#reverb10, day 20: Beyond Avoidance
Prompt the 20th:
#reverb10, day 19: Healing
Another overdue prompt:
#reverb10, day 18: Try
Blah blah behind, catching up, etc. A prompt from a few days back:
A Brief Technical Aside
Just to note that in the, what, four or five days since I’ve added the ReCaptcha plugin here, I’ve received a total of seven spam comments. In a similar span...
#reverb10, day 17: Lesson Learned
Today’s Yesterday’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 16: Friendship
Yesterday’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 15: 5 Minutes
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 14: Appreciate
Yesterday’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 13: Action
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, day 12: Body Integration
Yesterday’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 11: 11 Things
I started this post yesterday, hoping to get myself back on schedule, but a visit to some relatives intervened and kept me from finishing it. In any case, ye...
Undergrads Reimagine the Humanities
Last month, I was honored to be a keynote speaker at Re:Humanities, an undergraduate conference on digital media in academia organized by students at Haverfo...
#reverb10, Day 10: Wisdom
Behind again, not because I was so horribly busy yesterday (though I was busy enough), but because no matter how much I pondered this question, I wasn’t able...
#reverb10, Day 9: Party
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 8: Beautifully Different
I’m actually quite pleased that this is a second post for today, because I’d hate to have to contemplate it by itself. Interestingly, though I’ve subscribed ...
#reverb10, Day 7: Community
I’ve fallen a day behind here, for reasons I’ll write about in a minute. For now, yesterday’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 6: Make
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 5: Let Go
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 4: Wonder
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 3: Moment
Today’s prompt:
#reverb10, Day 2: What Gets in the Way
Today’s prompt:
One Word
This I’ll say at the outset: it is far harder for me to come up with one word than it is for me to come up with a thousand.
#reverb10
In the hopes of getting things around here moving a bit, of breaking up the logjam in my head, and of figuring out what’s ahead of me as I move on to new pro...
Relaunching The Anxiety of Obsolescence
Back in 2006, a few months before the release of my first book, The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television, I launched a small ...
The Future of the University Press
My friends at MPublishing have released a new issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing, guest edited by the director of the University of Michigan Press...
Peer-to-Peer Review and Its Aporias
Over the course of last week, a huge number of friends and colleagues of mine posted links and notes on Twitter and around the blogosphere about Mike O’Malle...
The Stein Taxonomy
Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book and key supporter of MediaCommons, has posted a provocation entitled “Proposing a Taxonomy of ...
IR 11.3
Keynote Nancy Baym, “This Song’s for You”
IR 11.2
Utterly fell down on the notetaking/blogging job today, due to early frustration when the paper I’d shown up early for wasn’t presented, and then a long mid-...
IR 11.1.4
Session 4 Networking and Social Sites
IR 11.1.3
A first in my conference-going experience: the first keynoter is sick in bed (get well, Jon Bing!), so the lecture hall is inhabited by sparse groups of folk...
IR 11.1.2
Session 2: CMS Futures: The Way Ahead for Course Management Systems Alex Halavais, Jeremy Hunsinger, Ted Coopman, Helen Keegan
IR 11.1.1
Please note that what follows are my notes, taken as I listen. Anything weird in here should be assumed to be my fault, and not that of the speakers.
#ir11
Today’s the first day of the eleventh annual conference of the Association of Internet Research, and the sixth of which I’ve attended. It’s lovely catching u...
On the Impossibility of Naive Reading
The recent New York Times Opinionator column by Robert Pippin, “In Defense of Naive Reading”, has had me thinking for the last week or so. I knew I wanted to...
Upcoming Dates
I’ve got a bunch of talks and conferences and other things scheduled in the coming weeks:
The New Everyday: Notes, Lists, and Everyday Inscriptions
[Crossposted from MediaCommons.]
Talk at the Hemispheric Institute
One of the first things I’m doing here at NYU, now that classes have started up and things are underway, is giving a talk at the Hemispheric Institute, as p...
To Read: How Not to Run a University Press
In the category of things that I used to post to the blog that now land on Twitter instead: the link. In an effort to maintain a better archive for myself, I...
Past and Future
For the next few days, my “Five Years Ago” block at right will be filled with post-Katrina posts. After all these years with the blog, it still feels very od...
MediaCommons, Open Review, and the New York Times
[Crossposted from MediaCommons.]
This Year
Where to begin? I’ve spent the last month getting myself moved across the country and settled into a small studio in New York, where I’m spending a year on s...
Justice
REMEDIES Plaintiffs have demonstrated by overwhelming evidence that Proposition 8 violates their due process and equal protection rights and that they ...
Anthologize
I’m way more pressed for time than I’d like right now, finishing up a bajillion details involved in moving myself and a subset of my stuff acr...
MediaCommons, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Open Review
[Crossposted from MediaCommons.]
Fair Use
The Library of Congress has just this morning issued its statement of exemptions to the portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that forbid the circ...
Where Am I Going, Where Have I Been
So I’ve managed to survive all of the bullet points on my insane itinerary of June and July travel, and am happily ensconced once again in my very own home, ...
Five Years Post-Tribble
My “five years ago today” feature reminds me that the aforementioned time has spanned since the uproar over Ivan Tribble’s infamous screed hit the Chron (now...
On the Road (Again) (and Again)
It’s been an eventful couple of months. A travelful couple of months, even. If you were able to see my Google Calendar, you’d see a whole lot of teal stripin...
Phi Beta Kappa address, “Keep in Touch”
As the 2009-10 president of Pomona College’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter, I was supposed to deliver the address at our commencement weekend initiation ceremony. I...
What a Press Can Add in the Age of DIY Publishing
What follows is a rough transcript of the talk I gave this past weekend at the annual meeting of the Association of American University Presses. The panel wa...
Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Values (part three)
There’s a fascinating exchange around open access publishing and the reasons scholars might resist it developing right now, beginning with Dan Cohen’s post, ...
A Little (Self-)Promotion
As I’ve mentioned around here a few times, I’ve been in the midst of a review this spring, and now that the results are official, I can finally say out loud ...
Time Will Tell, But Epistemology Won’t: The Richard Rorty Archive
My friend Liz Losh has let me know that this Friday UC Irvine is hosting a conference to celebrate the addition of Richard Rorty’s papers to the Critical The...
This One Goes to 11
As I’ve mentioned around here before, I’m in the midst of a promotion review, and am in the anxious waiting phase: everything I can do is done, things are ta...
More Gloating About My iPad
Finding myself yesterday felled by some nasty bug or another, I wound up spending the day in bed. And I can now say with certainty that the iPad is the best ...
We’ll Be Right Back, After These Messages
The recent flurry of posting around here — not to mention actual progress on my revisions — has meant that I’ve got a couple of things I’ve let slide, one of...
Revisions: On Multimodal Scholarship
I’m finishing up the revisions on chapter 2 today, and have been thinking about the section “from text to… something more.” I’ve expanded my thinking about m...
The Late Age of Print, Audio Edition
From Ted Striphas comes news of an exciting project: the crowd-sourced production of a text-to-speech audiobook version of his fantastic book, The Late Age o...
Preliminary Thoughts on the iPad
So I did, after a minor delay (produced by the Apple truck not showing up to the bookstore on time), get my hands on my new iPad. I spent most of day 1 just ...
Why I Can’t Wait to Get My Hands on My New iPad, All You Haters Notwithstanding
So yes, I did pre-order an iPad, or actually pre-reserve one with my college’s bookstore. And I intend to pick it up first thing tomorrow morning. And I abso...
Revisions
I’m vastly behind schedule, I’m afraid, but am at last pressing forward with revisions on Planned Obsolescence for the print edition. One of the things that’...
This Is Just to Note
That after yesterday’s funk, today has been an aw, shucks kinda day.
Back at It
I’m deep in a funk this morning, and am having a hard time yanking myself out of it.* So I’ve decided to overcompensate by writing a bit about something that...
The New Everyday
I’ve just posted the following announcement at MediaCommons:
Two Bits of Recent Work
I’ve got that cringing feeling that I haven’t been getting enough work done lately, but I at least have a few links to remind myself otherwise.
Things Go Awry
Yesterday’s Day of Digital Humanities experience didn’t exactly turn out as I’d hoped, as I found myself utterly without connectivity all day. Not only does ...
Day of Digital Humanities
A quick note: I’m (at least in theory) participating in today’s Day of Digital Humanities festivities. “In theory,” alas, because the conference I’m attendin...
The Future of Publishing?
A promo video produced by DK Books for a Penguin sales conference has gone something like viral in the last two days, getting a lot of attention in my circle...
Shakespeare Quarterly Open Review
Yet another month-long absence. At least this time I have a major project to show for it!
My Secret Life
Oh, hi! I’m sure it appears that I’ve forgotten about this blog thing. Really, it’s less that I’ve forgotten than that my attention has gotten fragmented in ...
Even Nearer
This happened to me again last night. Same intersection, except from the opposite direction; I was turning left across traffic into the side street that lead...
The Stakes of Disciplinarity
There’s been a lot of discussion in various internet settings over the last week, some of it pretty contentious, about the definition of the Digital Humaniti...
2009
The Legacy of David Foster Wallace
This morning, awfully bright and awfully early, I participated in a fantastic roundtable on the legacy of David Foster Wallace, which was quite well-attended...
#MLA09
I’ve been busy tweeting up a storm at the MLA this year (or what amounts to a storm for me, anyhow), but haven’t been compelled to write a full blog post as ...
Not Exactly the Tip of the Tongue
You know how sometimes you’re trying to think of a name or a word and it just won’t come, no matter how hard you try, but later that day while you’re choppin...
Peer Review as Dialogue
One of the most exciting parts of Planned Obsolescence for me has of course been the open review process we’ve been conducting at MediaCommons; it’s been fan...
UM/HASTAC Publication Prize
Over the course of the last year I’ve been very excitedly following the developments at the University of Michigan Press, as the press became an academic uni...
Gee, Time Warner, Thanks for Asking
I’ve just gotten the following email message from my friends at Time Warner Cable:
December!
So up inbetween the droning “ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod” of the last couple of weeks of the semester, I’ve got some pretty exciting stuff going on. First, I’ve ...
Planned Obsolescence Updates
There’ve been a few updates on Planned Obsolescence in the last couple of days, most notably that the text is now running in CommentPress 3.1, just released ...
Apparently I Don’t Teach Math
I just want to note that not one of the 46 students I’m teaching this semester pointed out that the percentages I listed on my syllabi, detailing the amount ...
Updates to Come, I Swear
I’m not sure where October went, much less the first two-thirds of November. Actually, I do know where it went: to three conferences in five weeks, with an a...
Though I Wish They’d Named It Something Else
I will begrudgingly admit that I’m intrigued by the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s new device, previewed today, which seeks to be an Unnamed Other E-Reader Kille...
IR10: Peer-to-Peer Review
I’m going to embed my slides from today’s talk here, but you’re probably better off actually looking at them on SlideShare, as you can see the notes that way…
And Then Five Years Later
Among other things this weekend, I’m re-reading Fanon for Monday’s class. Fascinating to see today’s five years ago post pop up.
IR10
I’m in Milwaukee this week at the tenth meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers. The good news is that the wireless is strong, ubiquitous, and fre...
FTC, Blog Regulator
Um, yeah. I’m sure that’ll work.
The Rise of the Landscape Web
I’ve noticed over the last couple of months that several of my favorite websites were becoming, well, wide. It’s become increasingly common, in fact, for me ...
The Waiting…
You know what they say about it.
Planned Obsolescence Community Blog
(cross-posted, with some edits for clarity, from the other Planned Obsolescence)
Digital Campus
The newest episode of the Digital Campus podcast, #44 – Unsettled, is up, and I’m thrilled that it mentions Planned Obsolescence. Digital Campus, produced by...
Planned Obsolescence: Now Online
Today’s the day: the project that I’ve been working on for the last year and a half is at last live and open for your reading and commenting pleasure. Planne...
Something’s… Not… Right…
I went to bed last night about 11.30, and got up this morning around 7.30. And inbetween, didn’t receive a single piece of email. For some reason, I’m having...
Things I Love About Things
I’ve been using Things as my task manager for some time now, both on my desktop and on my iPhone, and have absolutely loved it. It’s clean, super-functional,...
Teaching When (You Think) You Have the Flu
After I was told last Sunday that it was likely I had picked up H1N1, whether on top of a case of bronchitis or masquerading as a case of bronchitis, I took ...
The Flu and You
This semester has thus far not gone according to plan. We’re on the cusp of what is technically the fourth week of classes, and I’ve been in the classroom pr...
Ick
The semester started here just shy of a week ago, but because my classes fall on Monday and Wednesday, today’s my first real day of teaching. Labor Day. Usua...
Senioring a Young Field
In the coming year, I’m going to be going up for a promotion review, and along with all the other attendant stress work, I need to develop a list of potentia...
On the Run
The good news is that I’ve gotten my exercise today: after dragging the suitcase to the train station, and up and down the various flights of stairs between ...
The Opposition
I’m standing in the airport, after the usual delirious experience of waking up at 3.30 am to be ready for my 4.30 am cab. The flight I’m about to board, as u...
Um… Is This Thing On?
Oh. Hi there! Gee, um… long time no see.
The Cost of Peer Review and the Future of Scholarly Publishing
As is being discussed a good bit around the academic blogo-/twittersphere this morning, Jennifer Howard reports in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education on a...
Okay, AT&T, You’re On Notice
Clicking through my Google Reader a few minutes ago, I read a TechCrunch article that Meg had shared, which details the increasingly egregious service failur...
RIP, Walter Cronkite
One of the best things I’ve been asked to do at Pomona College so far was getting to introduce Walter Cronkite before his commencement address a few years ag...
On Teaching Infinite Jest
The following was originally published as a guest post on Infinite Summer.
Obsolete
The newest issue of M/C, the Journal of Media and Culture, is out, and it’s focused on a topic near and dear to my heart: the Obsolete. There’s an excellent ...
Please Reply This Email Immediately and Provide the Following Information Above
I’m not sure exactly why I find this as funny as I do. The sad thing, however, is that I’m quite sure someone’s going to fall for it.
Against Anonymity
I’m a bit off the grid for the next several days, but wanted quickly to draw your attention to an article by Jeffrey Di Leo published a couple of days ago at...
Blegging: Preservation
I’m deep in the thick of the chapter I’m writing on issues of preservation for digital scholarship, and am feeling fairly acutely the extent to which these i...
Why I Want Google Wave NOW, Please
Because I had a rather amazing exchange about the future of open access publishing via Twitter last night with Brett Bobley (@brettbobley), Dan Cohen (@danco...
Checked Your Privacy Settings Lately?
Otherwise, anyone might know what’s on your mind.
The Hybrid Future of the University Press
Yesterday was the first full day of the Digital Humanities 2009 conference, the first iteration of which I’ve gotten to attend. So far the conference has bee...
And Then This Week
Well, I suppose that three out of six isn’t half bad:
This Week
I have a few things that I need to accomplish:
Ambivalence
The ironies continue to pile up: five years ago today, I was moving office, out of a dank, lonely basement and into my newly renovated smallish (by the build...
Dr. George Tiller, RIP
Thankfully, other folks are doing a much better job of responding to this horror than I can right now, so I’ll just direct you their way, except to say a qui...
Five Years Later
I do not know whether to be amused by the irony or horrified by the passage of time.
Homeward Bound
Soon, at least.
Must Read: HASTAC/MLA Rethinking Tenure Guidelines
Cathy Davidson has an excellent post up at HASTAC thinking about the meaning of tenure and ways of imagining valid tenure standards for an increasingly inter...
The Future of Everything
I’m in the Boston area this week, speaking at a couple of conferences, the first of which is starting as I type — a meeting sponsored by AcademicCommons, a s...
Here’s Hoping You’re Not on the Plane Yet
Just now via email:
Blog-Based Peer Review
Noah Wardrip-Fruin has posted a thoughtful reconsideration of the experience of putting the manuscript of his forthcoming book, Expressive Processing, throug...
Not Schadenfreude, I Swear
Add this to the list of difficulties presented by holding SCMS in Tokyo this year: the government apparently asked the university at which the conference is ...
Back to Work
I began the summer’s work yesterday morning by starting a read-through of the manuscript thus far, and was thrilled to discover that the introduction is not ...
Requiescat in Pace
Today is the last day of what has been alternately a difficult and an exhilarating semester. Honestly, it’s the first semester in I can’t remember how long t...
MiT6
I’m at MiT6 this weekend, which is starting up as I type; if you’re here, be sure to say hello. I’ll post more from the conference as things unfold.
The Wages of Mouthing Off
Actually, I mean that in a more positive sense than it no doubt sounds. I tried a few other variants (Mouthing Off Pays Off!) but none were quite as satisfyi...
Not Dead Yet
Just utterly tyrannized by the to do list. Once the grading and the thesis drafts are out of the way, there are classes to prepare for, a grant proposal to b...
University Press + University Library = The Future of University Publishing?
crossposted from MediaCommons:
Getting Serious About the Online Part of Research Online
crossposted from MediaCommons:
Digital Humanities Roundup
I’ve just posted on MediaCommons in order to point to Lisa Spiro’s fantastic post rounding up and reflecting on important developments in the digital humanit...
Teaching Carnival 3.2
I’m deep in the thick of the best semester I’ve had in several years, so it’s taken some doing to pry me away from teaching in order to see what teaching-rel...
Teaching Carnival, TK
I’m ostensibly up tomorrow as host of Teaching Carnival 3.2, but poking through Delicious and Technorati is turning up little in the way of submitted materia...
My New TOS
There’s a fantastic series of tweets in my Twitter stream right now, from folks commenting on the new Facebook terms of service, which indicates that anythin...
Media Studies and Literary Studies
I was somewhat bemused to see the white paper recently released by the MLA, reporting to the Teagle Foundation on the goals and objectives of the undergradua...
Grrrr
If you’ve bothered coming round these parts lately, you’ll have noticed that things were loading excruciatingly slowly, a problem for which I was starting to...
MediaCommons Blogs
I was poking around the web a little while ago, pondering this blog — why I haven’t been posting much in recent months, wishing I were posting more, thinking...
Digital Peer Review
cross-posted at MediaCommons
More Complaints
Remember this kid? She, or someone like her, is at it again. Twice in the last two weeks I’ve had my Apple ID “disabled for security reasons,” which happens ...
Commenting Policy
I’m getting loads of comment spam of late that is not bot-produced, but rather manually added, designed to generate google juice for some commercial site by ...
CFP: MLA 2009
The following is a call for papers for a session sponsored by the MLA’s Media and Literature Discussion Group, to be held at the 2009 convention in Philadelp...
CommentPress
For all the folks who’ve been asking: CommentPress is back. I also have it on good authority that a major update will be coming soon.
While I’m At It
Sneak a peek at what I apparently started thinking seriously about five years ago today. I’m not sure whether I should be amazed by the prescience of that po...
Media in Transition
Incidentally, I just found out that my proposal for MiT6 was accepted; I’ll hope to see some of you there in April.
Campus-Based Publishing
The SPARC Campus-Based Publishing Resource Center has officially launched today, along with the guide to creating campus partnerships around publishing issue...
MediaCommons
Yesterday, it probably goes without saying, was a big day, made so not only by the inauguration but also by the first day of classes of the new semester. And...
Campus Collaborations
I’m in the midst of a section in the project in which I’m discussing the potential for strategic collaborations within universities around the issue of digit...
Edit Scrivenings
I finally got a chance at the very end of the MLA to sit down for coffee with Dave Parry, whom I’d tried but failed to catch up with at several earlier momen...
Probably Unrelated Observations
1. I am writing my way into new holes far faster than I can do the research and reading necessary to fill them. On the one hand, this is great; I’m clearly m...
Retreat, Advance
How else to put this: I survived the holidays, survived the MLA, rang in the new year. I’m back home now, happily ensconced at my desk, hoping to carve a sma...
2008
More Fun with Software
Having blogged my excitement about the public beta of DEVONthink 2, and trying to get myself re-organized for my winter break projects, I spent much of yeste...
Transitions
I’m finding it extremely difficult this year to make the shift out of the fall semester and into everything I need to focus on over the winter break. Probabl...
DEVONthink
I’ve been using DEVONthink for a while now as a means of keeping my research notes organized, and so was happy (much as was Dave) to receive notice today of ...
Firsts in Travel
Today marks the first time I’ve sat in the terminal waiting two and a half hours for the sun to melt the ice off the wings of my airplane, because my Souther...
New Toys
I’ve just this morning upgraded to WordPress 2.7, and the nifty new interface has inspired me to actually post something. So here’s the post announcing my ne...
Hawaii, Day 1
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/3061888328/ "photo sharing") [the view ...
Post-Conference Post
The most amazing thing about conferences for me is always how energized I am during and after them, how excited I become about whatever project I’m working o...
MSA
The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur, between the election, a pile of grading, a few general crises around here, and so forth, but one of the things ...
Tuesday
It’ll no doubt shock everyone to hear that I’ve been starkly unproductive today. Weirdly unable to focus. Distracted. Nervous.
2001
While you can, you should go do a little self-googling over at Google 2001. It’s mighty amusing to see how much less of a web presence I had back then…
Coming Back
I honestly didn’t mean to disappear for quite this long. I needed a little time, of course, to grieve, to process everything that was going on around me, to ...
In Memoriam
I’ve spent the last few days trying to process my grief over the loss of my colleague Dave Wallace, trying to imagine saying something even remotely signific...
Placeholder
Traffic has picked up considerably around here — I assume with folks looking for a reaction.
Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet?
Answer here. (Be sure to read the source code.)
Department
The big news around here is last night’s announcement that the Media Studies program at Pomona, in which I’ve taught for the last ten years, and which I’ve c...
But Where’s the Minotaur?
This completely made my day:
Bringing It Home
The neighborhood they’re talking about in this article is where my parents live (though the image is from another neighborhood not too far away).
The News from Baton Rouge
I talked to my mother a little while ago, and the news from post-Gustav Baton Rouge (which only Josh and The Advocate seem to be reporting on at all) is not ...
The Work Ahead
Yesterday was the first day of classes around here, but today’s my first day of teaching. In preparation, I’ve done a major revamp of my teaching site, built...
Twitterings on 2 September 2008
@chutry: gah! This year, I’m chairing a panel on the 29th at 1.45pm, which feels like primetime. Last year’s panel was during lunch. #
Twitterings on 31 August 2008
Watching Gustav bearing down on the fam. Not happy about it. #
Twitterings on 28 August 2008
@ghw_twits: Thanks! That’s a serious vote of confidence. Now I just have to get it written. #
Twitterings on 26 August 2008
@ghw_twits: only a little. It is online (http://www.mlajournals.org/loi/pmla — inst. access required), but the accusation still bears out. #
The Contract
If you’re a Facebook status watcher and a friend of mine, you may have seen the recent update in which I announced that I have a contract. It’s an advance co...
Twitterings on 21 August 2008
Having to get the car smogged so I can renew my registration for which I am paying a $15 late fee because the DMV didn’t correct my address. # And no, i...
Eating the Elephant
The return from Paris, a little less than a week ago, went fairly well all things considered: all flights on time, all connections made, all bags arrived. No...
Twitterings on 19 August 2008
@mkirschenbaum @nowviskie: he spent last year with us; we’re really going to miss him. #
Twitterings on 15 August 2008
From the window of our landing plane, California sure looked… brown. #
Twitterings on 14 August 2008
Off plane in Houston. How utterly bizarre it is to be surrounded by people speaking English. # I liked being able to tune out most of the chatter around...
Rentrée
Our twelve weeks in Paris have slid by alarmingly fast, and we’re deep in the thick of packing up for Thursday’s trip back to California. I’ve gotten myself ...
Twitterings on 10 August 2008
@mkirschenbaum: Well, you know, there’s sensitive information in there! I mean, if it fell into just anyone’s hands… #
On the Other Hand
I did make this very short list of academic blogs, selected by the editors of More.ca, “Canada’s site celebrating women over 40.” Which is pretty cool. And m...
Twitterings on 8 August 2008
Why is it that having researched and written something on the order of 70 pages of new prose this summer feels like not having done enough? # Stop the p...
Twitterings on 5 August 2008
Just woke up from the first teaching-panic dream of the season. Thanks, August. # @mkgold: Echoing all the congrats, and also the request to hear about ...
Hrmph
There was a flurry of posts a few weeks back by folks noting that they’d been included (or not) on something that presented itself as being a list of the top...
Twitterings on 4 August 2008
@academicdave: I’d follow up @ghw_twits rec with Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book, for an argument countering EE’s techno-determinism. #
Heh
Not only did I completely rock in my French-telephonic skillz yesterday, but I also managed to repair the wi-fi situation.
Adventures in Wi-Fi
The bad news is that our internet connection in the flat crapped out last night.
Twitterings on 1 August 2008
@calamityjake: Congrats on being done! #
Collaboration
Just before plunging back into my chapter this morning, I took my usual tour of the RSS feeds, and discovered DR’s post about collaborative authorship and it...
Twitterings on 29 July 2008
@halavais: Because you are being held hostage by the baby-industrial complex, man. # @calamityjake: Hope you’re metaphysically alright. Apparently it wa...
Deadwood, Take Two
R. and I have been rewatching Deadwood, starting from the beginning, over the last few weeks, and I’ve found myself rather astonished by a few things:
Twitterings on 23 July 2008
Coffee, baguette, updates. Trying to get the morning started. # Realizing that the google-alertedness of my newest post (http://kfitz.info/blog/iphonery...
iPhonery
I’m sitting in a cafe down the street, the one I mentioned some days back, the one with the streaming L.A. radio station.* The other thing they’ve got is fre...
Twitterings on 22 July 2008
Really, really wishing that the folks drilling into the other side of the wall would finish their project already and knock it the hell off. # @2xlp c’e...
Click
It was like someone flipped a lightswitch.
Twitterings on 21 July 2008
@wmrandth, thanks for the shout. @lblanken, there are more at http://machines.pomona.edu, but I think not what you’re looking for… # …that being a colle...
Insert Nippular Pun of Your Choosing Here
One wonders whether the final outcome (please god) of this debacle will get anything like the coverage (so to speak) that its origin did: the Third Circuit U...
Versioning
WordPress 2.6, which was released just a few days ago, contains expanded support for versioning of blog posts, allowing an author to see all of the revisions...
Twitterings on 19 July 2008
Marveling at the omnipresence of this dark knight fella in everybody’s updates. Something happen over there while I was eating a baguette? #
Service
So here’s a set of research findings that have caught me completely by surprise*: women’s careers in academia sometimes stall out on the road to full profess...
Le Quatorze
There was a day last week when I joked with R. that the entirety of the French air force flew over our flat, a few planes at a time, in tight formations. And...
Twitterings on 11 July 2008
My iPhone 2.0 is working swell, but where’s my MobileMe? I hate the name, but I want the farking update, thx. Don’t tell me I’m up to date. #
Random Thoughts, Friday Morning
What would it take to convince US stationers/businesses/whomever else to abandon our attachment to “letter size” paper and adopt the more aesthetically pleas...
Global Networks
Yesterday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours in a small caf?© a few blocks from here, first doing some reading and then having coffee with a former student...
Yay.
I’m having one of those brilliant, and altogether too rare, periods in the writing process when everything that I’ve been up to, but didn’t really know on a ...
Twitterings on 4 July 2008
Happy 4th to everybody back there. #
Twitterings on 2 July 2008
After a couple of weeks of utterly annoying sunshine, it’s finally raining in Paris again — a tremendous relief! #
Future Writing, Take Two
Good grief but it’s disheartening to look at today’s “five years ago” post and realize that I’m not only still asking many of the same questions, but also st...
Twitterings on 29 June 2008
Following the leaders: testing out Friendfeed, which at least so far remains under capacity! (Also, the comment function is nice.) # @kfitz Also, while ...
The Bolter Principle
I eagerly anticipate at some as yet undetermined point in the future having a complex thought of which I do not later discover Jay David Bolter has already s...
The Future of Citations
Things have been a bit quiet around MediaCommons for a while, as we’ve been working behind the scenes on a major platform transformation that should be comin...
Twitterings on 26 June 2008
Someone snuck in during the night and filled my head with rubber cement. Very clever. # Best part of Macworld’s “Empty Your Inbox” advice is keeping mai...
Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
I had a positively spectacular work day on Tuesday, one of the first days in years on which I could say that I’d actually managed to accomplish way more than...
Twitterings on 25 June 2008
Would much appreciate it if someone could tell me what good sinuses are supposed to do me. Thx. #
Stuart Moulthrop, “After the Last Generation”
Earlier so-called communications revolutions wrought only partial transformations: the increased emphasis on the image in photography and film; the recove...
Twitterings on 23 June 2008
Back in the thick of the project — or at least beginning to slog along again. #
I’m Getting in the Plane
I’ve got a million favorite lines, and so I just grabbed for the first one that came to mind. That there won’t be any more has already made the world seem a ...
Twitterings on 22 June 2008
Testing twhirl. Got nothing but errors yesterday; seems to be working now. Still not sure whether I like it, but it’s good for killing time. #
Twitterings on 21 June 2008
About to head out for La F?™te de la Musique. I’ll be the one sitting at the cafe drinking a beer. # @bighandsome: Surely you make up for it in purple-a...
On Elite Education
There’s been a lot of discussion in the last few days of William Deresiewicz’s article in The American Scholar, “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education.” I’...
Whoops, Vol. VI
For the sixth year running, and despite having reminded myself about it two days ago, I’ve once again missed the anniversary of starting Planned Obsolescence...
The Golden Notebook(s)
My friends over at the Institute for the Future of the Book yesterday announced a new project, in which they’re working with the British Arts Council and Har...
Twitterings on 17 June 2008
I am completely and totally without focus today. That is all. #
Twitterings on 14 June 2008
Last night’s BSG (torrent) was really alarming, until Google told me it wasn’t the last episode *ever*, just the last until 1/2009. Sheesh. #
Mr. Jobs, Tear Down this Wall
The title of this post may be a trifle overstated,* but I’m nonetheless seething over this. So, yes, I just got my regular old EDGE iPhone in December, and y...
Twitterings on 12 June 2008
Took much of the day off today, to let the synapses cool down a bit. The work’s going well, but it’s exhausting… #
Planned Obsolescence: The Proposal
As promised several days back, the proposal for the blob, below the fold. Any and all comments would be enormously appreciated. Further blobbing will follow ...
Twitterings on 5 June 2008
Slowly but surely knocking things off the to-do list and out of the inbox. I only hope I haven’t tempted the busywork demons by saying so. #
Time-Shifting
I’d completely forgotten that one of the most brilliant parts of working here in Paris (leaving aside, for the moment, the bare fact that I’m working here in...
M?©trique
There are some things that I’m just not getting used to negotiating in French. The telephone, for instance, still gives me shivers when it rings, and not (or...
Twitterings on 1 June 2008
A brilliant morning of writing and the markets. Now to stay awake for the rest of the afternoon, before the Sunday evening falafel. #
Pipe Dream
Someday I will not need to relearn the lesson that I’m most productive as a writer when I postpone checking my email until after I’ve gotten well into the mo...
Twitterings on 30 May 2008
has done away with the last outstanding annoyances; now nothing’s in the way of the big project. Of course, that means no excuses. Hmm. # has just answe...
The Blob
The peer review chapter that I’ve mentioned a few times of late is a key element of the big project I’ve been working on since January (or more accurately, g...
This Is Scholarship
A colleague of mine recently sent me a link to the Summer 2008 issue of Kairos, guest edited by Scott Lloyd DeWitt and Cheryl Ball, entitled “The Manifesto I...
The Key
The transition to life in Paris has gone amazingly smoothly thus far; we’ve found the perfect boulangerie, a great local cafe, and even managed to find our w...
Planned Obsolescence, Scholarly Publishing, and Peer Review
I’m back at work on the peer review chapter this morning; I started re-reading it yesterday, but was unable to make much sense of what I’d done during the sp...
Twitterings on 24 May 2008
After a pretty amazing first night’s sleep, sitting down at the computer with a cup of coffee and getting to work. The summer has begun! #
On Reviens
The most amazing thing thus far about our return to Paris is the immediacy of our immersion; having landed yesterday at CDG, taxied to the apartment we’re re...
Twitterings on 22 May 2008
What am I forgetting? What am I forgetting? What am I forgetting? # Sitting on the plane, waiting for takeoff for Paris. Au revoir, Etats-Unis! #
Twitterings on 18 May 2008
Recovering from two days of graduation festivities spent in 100-degree heat. Happily, ice-cold beverages are just what I want. #
Summer
That summer is here is pretty undeniable — in fact, unseasonably so: as we venture into graduation weekend, we’re beset by severe heat advisories and a serio...
Twitterings on 11 May 2008
Sitting in a Community Coffee House, trying to finish up the grading. Thanks, local place, for the free wi-fi! # @ghw_twits: Great video, not to mention...
Twitterings on 9 May 2008
Using stupid wi-fi you have to pay for because my mother’s internet is broken. The price one pays to be a good daughter… # All senior grades have been f...
Twitterings on 5 May 2008
@calamityjake: back atcha — good luck with the last stuff there, and the next stuff to follow! #
Twitterings on 4 May 2008
Just tripped and fell for the second time this year. Wearing the same shoes both times. Damn you, Keen, and your big rubbery toes. #
Twitterings on 3 May 2008
The most awesome thing about Twittering now is having yet another publishing option that I can fail to update often enough. #
Tonight, A Conversation about the Future of Technology
“‘Charlie Rose’ by Samuel Beckett”:
Twitterings on 1 May 2008
@calamityjake: Whoo-hoo, on all counts! # @chutry: Congrats — fantastic news! #
This is the Post
In which I bemoan the absence of posting; In which I gripe about being so busy; In which I broadly hint that all the interesting things are unpublishable; In...
Twitterings on 26 April 2008
Very, very happy to be home. That is all. #
Twitterings on 25 April 2008
@lblanken: So many possibilities! My favorite would be Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 #
Dreaming You’re Awake
What little I managed to sleep last night, I spent dreaming about being exactly where I was, in the room where I was sleeping, in the house that I was in, wa...
Twitterings on 23 April 2008
Flying with a sinus infection is no fun. Just in case you were wondering. # PS: iPhone corrects “incase” to read “invade.” Be careful when authorizing l...
Paranoia
My technologies are suddenly making me very nervous. Yesterday, at the end of a very long and stressful day, I came home and found my laptop open — I was qui...
Twitterings on 21 April 2008
Two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks. Perhaps if I say it enough, it’ll start to sink in. #
Well, That Was Fun
I’m still uncertain about the header; it may change yet, but I’m pretty happy with the rest. Do let me know if you find anything weird. (I mean, things I’ve ...
Twitterings on 19 April 2008
Contemplating ripping all my CDs and then carting them off to the used record store. When’s the last time I listened to a CD, anyhow? # Obviously tinker...
Further Tinkering
So the twittery updates have started bugging me; I’m going to test out the daily digest option for a few days, and if that still bugs me, I’ll move to the si...
Twitterings on 18 April 2008
Fighting off a technicolor sinus infection. Yum. #
Response to “Electronic Media, Identity Politics, and the Rhetoric of Obsolescence”
While I certainly agree that reports of the ‘death of the novel’ have been greatly exaggerated, and anxieties about new media technologies and the threats...
Twitterings on 15 April 2008
Staying home in your pajamas on a Tuesday morning feels like playing hooky, even if you’re doing it in order to read a senior thesis. #
Future and Past
It’s prospie season, round these parts, and the campus is full of admitted students and their families, who are going to various panel discussions, browsing ...
A Twittering Update
I’ve edited my feeds (RSS, RSS2, RDF, and atom) such that posts generated by the Twitter Tools plugin are excluded from my feeds. Let me know if you spot any...
Twitterings on 11 April 2008
Testing out the code for excluding twitterings imported to my blog from my RSS feed… #
Twitterings on 10 April 2008
Ikea sez a new sofa may be all I need. If only it were so. # How does one go about thickening one’s skin, exactly? #
Twitterings on 9 April 2008
Classes went well, faculty meeting was survivable, and now the last minute of office hours is ticking to a close. Wednesday, complete. # Wishing I had s...
Twitterings
What I was tinkering with yesterday was Twitter Tools, a plugin for WordPress that connects your blog and your Twitter account, allowing you do a range of th...
Twitterings on 8 April 2008
@chutry Maybe we should set up an exchange; you read mine and I’ll read yours. That way they’ll all be new and different! #
Pardon the Dust
Doing a bit of tinkering in the background here, so things may look a bit odd at moments. Carry on.
Technology Updates
Of which there are several:
In the Absence of Thoughts, Cat Blogging
But no actual cats. I saw this animation the other day, and something in it resonated so deeply that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s vira...
if:book, NYU, the NEH, and MediaCommons
(Crossposted from MediaCommons.)
Spring Broke
Alarmingly, we’ve hit the midpoint of spring break already, and this is the first time I’ve managed to post. I’ve meant to post every day — really, I have — ...
Second Lives
For the last couple of years, I’ve been a member of the executive committee of the MLA’s discussion group on literature and media (a group name that makes me...
Survived
The symposium was a smashing success, I’m happy to report; the talks were all pitch-perfect and, for a Saturday, we got a respectable turnout. Honestly, thou...
The Descent
I’ve been writing up a storm in whatever stolen moments I can get, and working like a fiend at every other hour of the day, with the exceptions of the ones w...
Good News, Bad News
The good news is that I’ve been writing fairly well, am close to a draft on the new article/chapter, and am also close to a draft of the book/project proposa...
“White Women Are a Problem”
From the Broadsheet, without comment:
Transformative Works and Cultures
Transformative Works and Cultures, an exciting new electronic journal (whose board I’m on) published by the Organization for Transformative Works, has just r...
Administration
I have had one of those days that makes me want to run away and never ever be in charge of anything again.
Friday!
Week 1 status report:
Epiphany
I had one of those moments earlier this week, in which I suddenly felt as though the fog had lifted and everything I’d been muddling through for the last yea...
Geeky as I Want to Be
I believe that this may be my most fun semester ever.* My schedule includes, on the English side of my appointment, my Race, Gender, and Science Fiction cour...
The New Regime, Day 2
Day 2 has not gone, shall we say, as well as day 1 did. This is primarily due to the fact that I woke up at 2 am, a bit sick and completely unable to go back...
Peer Review
Yesterday morning, as part of the new regime, I sat down and did half an hour of uninterrupted, undistracted writing, beginning the process of blocking out t...
New Leaf
The spring semester doesn’t start until tomorrow, but today’s the first day of the new regime: I got up early, I’m sitting at the computer for half an hour o...
Telepresence
I spent a big chunk of yesterday (and will be spending a similar chunk of today) conducting a series of interviews via video conferencing, and I’m having one...
Air
I’m still processing my responses to yesterday’s Macworld Stevenote and the announcement of the MacBook Air. On the one hand, a super-lightweight portable co...
Blur
I’m off to the eye doctor, foax, which doesn’t bode well for the old productivity today. I’ll be spending part of what remains of the day in a meeting, and t...
Pre-Semester Anxiety
Which is less anxiety about the semester, per se, than anxiety about the fact that the break between semesters is all but over, and that I’ve still got an en...
Open Access
One presentation in this session on open access; notes below the fold.
Scholarly Collaboration, Day 2
This morning’s first panel was on campus strategic planning initiatives.
Scholarship in New Media
Final presentation of the day, from Dan Schnaidt, below the fold.
Web 2.0 in the Classroom
Three excellent presentations in this session, below the fold.
Scholarly Collaboration in the Digital Age
Today’s the NITLE conference on campus, beginning with a plenary panel on Scholarly Publication. My paper (based on my article, “CommentPress: New (Social) S...
Completism
Why is it that, even when I’ve realized that the book I’ve started reading isn’t the text I actually need to be reading — either it doesn’t do the thing I th...
Keynote
I spent most of yesterday working on cutting a 35-page paper down into the 15-20 minute talk I’ll be giving on Friday at a NITLE symposium on collaboration i...
Geaux!
Four years ago, I live-blogged the game (let’s count: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen ...
Emerging
I’m finally acknowledging this morning that the holidays are over, that there are two weeks left before classes start, and that if I’m going to get anything ...
2007
Why I Hate Hackers Right Now
I’ve noticed in my stats over the last couple of days that I’ve been getting some hits off some genuinely vile googlings, things I’m not going to reproduce h...
MLA Thoughts
Recovering today after a quite wonderful MLA. I got to meet several people that I’d been hoping to introduce myself to for a while, I got to catch up with so...
The Sum Total of My Negative Thoughts Regarding My New iPhone
1. Man, do I have some greasy fingers.
Another Year, Another MLA
The last few days have been a blur of travel and family, all of which I survived, though not without some bumps along the way. I’m happily ensconced in my ho...
No, Seriously
I received a very nice and fairly apologetic note today, informing me that I was not elected to the Delegate Assembly of the MLA.
Ahhhh
The real beauty part of having teeny tiny little classes, as I’ve always suspected but never really gotten to experience, is that grading goes fast. One can ...
Trend
With one exception, every single Christmas card I have received so far this year has been produced by Shutterfly.
Kindle, Part Two
So a pal of mine has just drawn my attention to an interesting article in the L.A. Times from about ten days or so ago on responses to the Kindle. The articl...
Outstanding
I’ve just found out that The Anxiety of Obsolescence has been named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2007 by CHOICE, the publication of the Association of C...
Two Things I Have Decided
… since R. took off for the holidays:
Hitting Bottom
Every semester has an emblematic moment. This semester’s finally arrived today, in the moment when, walking along talking with the dean, I stumbled on a bit ...
Things I’ve Missed Commenting Upon While the Urge to Blog Has Been More or Less Absent, Part 1
Amazon Kindle: My Writing Machines class spent a fair chunk of the week of its release discussing the Kindle, the things that make it cooler than the Sony Re...
Back to Work
R. and I are just finishing up a long weekend away, spent in a very low-key way, if not exactly in a very low-key place, mostly holed up in a hotel working. ...
Hornets
For the last three days, as I’ve faced my computer in my office, I’ve heard this insistent tapping at the windows in front of me; dozens of hornets buzzed ou...
LinkedIn?
I am, at the moment, just freaked out enough to feel the need to post this right away, though it’s one of those things that on further reflection may make me...
Mark Twain Project
My friends at the University of California Press and the California Digital Library project last week launched a beta version of the Mark Twain Project, an a...
A Slight Snag
The only problem with refocusing this blog on my research is that, of late, I’m not doing any, as, well, it’s November. This week, I have a set of project ou...
AOIR 8.3.1
This morning’s keynote speaker was one of my favorite people, John Willinsky, head of the Public Knowledge Project, which has produced both the Open Journal ...
AOIR 8.2.3
Yesterday’s keynote was from Henry Jenkins, entitled “The Moral Economy of Web 2.0: Reconsidering the Relations Between Producers and Consumers.” I’m posting...
AOIR 8.2.2
I sorta dropped the ball on conference blogging yesterday, as I got increasingly caught up in conferencing itself — but I’m going to attempt to catch up on t...
AOIR 8.2.1
The first panel I made it to today (I slept in a tiny bit, and then got so irate over the Chronicle that I missed the first session) focused on the question ...
Private Communications
Okay, I’m in the middle of reading today’s Chronicle Careers column, and have just hit a paragraph (or two) that has me positively gobsmacked. The column is ...
At the Blogging Crossroads
I’ve read (and written) any number of blog posts over the last few years analyzing the phenomenon of meta-blogging — posts that creep up on meta-meta-bloggin...
AOIR 8.1.4
The last panel for me for today was a collection of papers focused on methodological questions, ranging from the formulation of research premises, through th...
AOIR 8.1.3
Post-lunch panel today on blogging, with four excellent papers: Sean Lawson, on milblogging in relationship to the military’s official attempts to regulate a...
AOIR 8.1.2
The first keynote of the conference was from John Lester of Linden Labs, on Second Life. It was an interesting talk, for someone (like me) who has paid very ...
AOIR 8.1.1
First panel of the day, on sexuality and gender online; several excellent papers. I’m particularly compelled by Michele White’s exploration of the heteronorm...
Cool, I Think…
Does this mean that when I’m back in Paris next summer, I can buy an Orange SIM card for the iPhone I’ll have by then and use it natively?
Internet Research, Eh?
I’m headed here later today, for this. I’m certain to see him, and him, and no doubt a bunch of other folks, too. Look me up if you’re there.
My Week in Publishing
Apparently this is the week when everything I’ve done for the last four months hits the metaphorical stands: today, the newest issue of Vectors was released;...
The Return of the Review
The other thing I’ve been meaning to post about: my friend Bill Tipper has for the last several months been overseeing the rebirth of editorial content at Ba...
CommentPress: New (Social) Structures for New (Networked) Texts
Late last spring, I attended “New Structures, New Texts,” a very exciting one-day meeting of folks from various academic publishing units, both press-affilia...
The Most Brilliant Thing I’ve Read All Month
That would be this hint on how to force Apple Mail.app to display messages in plain-text. Even those annoying messages from the assistant who insists on usin...
RCCS Reviews
As hinted yesterday, I spent part of last week working on a response to some reviews of The Anxiety of Obsolescence. Those reviews (five of them!), and my re...
Deadlines
Here’s where I’ve been, and where I’ll continue to be for a bit yet:
Marketing
I just got the following email message from a colleague on the far side of the country, with whom I actually haven’t been in contact in at least four or five...
More on CommentPress
The Chronicle covers the Institute for the Future of the Book’s release of CommentPress this week. Overall, it’s a strong article, though with a pretty unfor...
The Googlization of Everything
From my friends at the Institute for the Future of the Book today comes the launch of Siva Vaidhyanathan’s new book-in-progress, The Googlization of Everythi...
Thankfully
I’m utterly flabbergasted by this story, from the afternoon update of the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Personal Technology Updates
An odd assortment of things:
What I’d Really Like
Is another three hours in the day, only available for reading and writing. No meetings, no meals, no phone calls, no email. Preferably — and this will no dou...
September Is the Cruelest Month
Seriously: forget April.
In Theory…
From the Chronicle of Higher Education today comes an announcement of a report conducted by the University of California’s Office of Scholarly Communication ...
Deblogging
What is it about being at home that makes me stop blogging? I posted ever so regularly during the Paris sojourn, and even managed the occasional post during ...
“University Publishing in a Digital Age,” in a Digital Age
A while back, I mentioned the release of the Ithaka report on University Publishing in a Digital Age. Ithaka has now partnered with the Scholarly Publishing ...
Have I Really Been Gone That Long?
I just got an email message from MoveOn.org, with the subject line “Vigil to End the War in Claremont,” and for a few seconds longer than I’d like to admit, ...
Kicked
A nine-hour time zone change in one direction, followed two days later by a three-hour change back the other direction.
Flying
We left the flat this morning at 9, headed into the various queues that make up pretty much the entirety of the CDG experience. The taxi was fine, the airpor...
Abjection
I am completely up to my eyeballs in theories of subjection right now, and am thoroughly enjoying the connections that the reading that I’m doing is helping ...
Ignore the Line Beneath This One
Have not posted in part because I don’t want my very own blog to confront me with the knowledge that it’s no longer July. But must suck it up: August is both...
MediaCommons Series Casefiles
Among the kinds of texts that we’ve repeatedly noted as potential forms for MediaCommons to explore is what I’ve previously referred to as the “digital caseb...
This is a Test Post
In which I attempt to figure out whether my computer, or WordPress, or the internet more generally has a problem with the 31st of July. I posted an entry on ...
Back to Work with You, Then
There’s much I’d like to post about, but there’s only been steadfast, nose-to-grindstone work today, in part because I’m feeling that last week running throu...
Completion
I’ve been taking all my research notes in TextMate for a while now, which, as text editors go, is really way more powerful than what I need. What I like abou...
More Anxiety, Other Obsolescences
I had a great IM chat with Stephanie Booth this morning. I met Stephanie at Blogtalk back in October, and she pinged me today to tell me about an article of ...
University Publishing in a Digital Age
I haven’t gotten to read the full report yet, but the Chronicle’s article today on the release of the Ithaka report, University Publishing in a Digital Age, ...
CommentPress
The Institute for the Future of the Book has today announced the release of its open source WordPress theme, CommentPress, which allows for easy online publi...
Introduction to Literary Research
The database anthology I’m on the editorial board of is going into a second edition, of sorts — we’re adding a fair number of new texts and cleaning up some ...
The Happiest Person in Paris
It’s raining again! And it looks like it’s going to rain all day!
On the Brighter Side
First off, there are still two full weeks left, plus a full day of packing. And the longest time I’ve spent here before was two weeks, so it’s just like that...
Undone
R. and I have been back at work this week after our weekend of picnics, and I’ve been attempting to knock some smallish tasks off the to-do list. The article...
Good Reading
I got sucked into a conversation last night over at Unfogged that started out with ogged’s annoyance over what he refers to as the “bitchy whine” at the Wash...
Et le Quinze, Aussi
This was the weekend of picnics — first Saturday’s explosion-filled French-speaking one, and then Sunday’s, which was a bit more peaceful and overwhelmingly ...
Le Quatorze Juillet
As I remarked to R. midway through dinner last night, as we sat in the courtyard of the house of a friend of a friend of a friend up in the 20th, listening t...
Blogging: Firstborn or Second Coming?
This was originally going to be another comment on the previous post, which I’ve been thinking about a bunch. Partially because meg seems to have gotten the ...
Again with the Blegging
Somewhere, not terribly long ago, I heard or read someone make the argument that blogging was the first genuinely internet-native mode of publishing. I’ve be...
But Before I Get to That
It astonishes me how frequently I say to myself, I’m going to write an article about x, and then realize that in order to make the argument about x that I re...
Pinxo
An email correspondent has asked about — nay, demanded — that post about the meal. I feel honor-bound to comply:
Météo
Everyone here has been complaining about the weather non-stop, or, when not complaining about it, apologizing for it. “The weather,” they say, shrugging in t...
07.07.07
Simply marking the moment. Carry on.
Not So Terrifically Random Friday Thoughts
— The box has been resent, via a much more expensive but apparently trackable commercial carrier, who promises that it will arrive on Monday, July 9, at 11.3...
Good News, Bad News
The good news is that the mystery box has been found!
Oh Yeah, Happy, Uh…
There’s always something very odd about being in a place where the 4th of July is only… July 4.
Semi-Random Thoughts about Books
1. The box of them (a.k.a. le colis de mystère) is still nowhere to be found. The USPS remains clueless. La Poste no longer acknowledges that there was once ...
So Many Projects, So Little Focus
It’s gray and rainy here in Paris today, which is actually kind of awesome because it enables me to refrain from feeling guilty that I’m sitting here at the ...
There Are No Items to Show in This View
Must post quickly, because I know it won’t last, but: as of 2.43 pm CET today, my email inbox is completely, 100% empty. In fact, so are the inboxes for all ...
Authority 3.0
One of the speakers at the “New Structures, New Texts” summit in early June was Michael Jensen, the director of web communication for the National Academies,...
hic
We were down for a few hours in the early a.m., PDT (around 1 p.m. ish here) for some site maintenance, which I got a little carried away with. All seems oka...
Life in the Interstice
I’m currently reading Empire of Signs (one of the few books that actually went in the suitcase, which I’m trying to spread out enough to tide me over), which...
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
One of the greatest joys of summer, for me, is getting a brief glimpse of that seemingly long-ago period of my life when I used to Read for Fun. Which is som...
Your Amazon.co.uk order has dispatched
No sign of box-o-books. Paid approx. $67 yesterday to have two books I already own sent to the woman whose name is on the mailbox, who will hopefully receive...
Updates
Sleeping: improved, but not perfect.
Un Post sur La Poste
I have to admit, I’ve gotten a bit complacent these days. Since moving to an address that the postal system and the various private shipping companies actual...
Where Is Everybody?
Since my migration from ExpressionEngine to WordPress, my site traffic has fallen off by something between 60 and 75 percent. I want to attribute this to the...
Solstice
Yesterday was the summer solstice, of course, the longest day of the year, which hereabouts began with the first bits of sun, sometime around 5.15 am, and en...
Precedings
Ben has just reminded me of something that I meant to post, both here and at MediaCommons, after the New Structures, New Texts summit: Nature has recently an...
Five
I swore I wasn’t going to miss it this year, as I did last year and the year before (and the year before that, and the year before that). I even went so far ...
Les Pauvres
Poor, poor beleaguered experts. How can one possibly survive the onslaught of the unwashed (and uncredentialed) blogospheric masses?
Tee-totaling
I’m quite behind the times on this (appropriate for mon ?©tat, quand je souffre du d?©calage horaire), but the talk of the lefty blogosphere a couple of week...
Update from Paris
In no particular order:
Who Needs Sleep?
Well, I’m never gonna get it.
Feed Me!
Incidentally, if you’ve been reading Planned Obsolescence via an RSS feed, you’ll no doubt have noticed that the feed URLs have changed since the migration t...
It Goes On and On and
I suddenly find myself with about a dozen things I’d like to write about, which is a remarkable change from the blankness that I’ve experienced when ponderin...
Packing
The last three days have been utterly consumed with departure-for-Paris business. We head off tomorrow morning, and there are at least three things I need to...
Categories
I’m tinkering a bit with my categories, trying to make them a bit more tree-like, but given that I’ve already got two systems represented here (the old tripa...
But It’s Summer!
So why am I attending meetings and writing reports?
New Economics
Session 4: New Economics
New Structures
Finishing up the notes from yesterday’s meeting:
New Texts
Session 2: New “Texts”
New Directions
Notes from this morning’s first session follow. Any misrepresentations herein are solely the fault of the note taker.
New Structures, New Texts
I’m in Oakland for the day today, at a thoroughly exciting meeting: “New Structures, New Texts: A Summit on the Library and the Press as Partners in the Ente...
It’s Not TV
Last night, I have to say, was a heck of a night of television — the second-to-last episode of The Sopranos (EVER, as the trailer for next’s week’s episode i...
Welcome, Almost
The transition to WordPress has thus far gone fairly well, and what you see is roughly the site you’ll see once I’m done. However, I’ve got one significant p...
AAAAARGH!
mod_rewrite is determined to kill me. Here’s what I managed to figure out: I can use mod_rewrite to rewrite my URLs from ``
Because I Am Precisely That Nuts
And because I didn’t feel like working today: I managed to find a way to export my content from ExpressionEngine and import it into WordPress. And I’ve found...
One Thousand One
Hey! Regardless of what my permalinks seem to tell you, that last entry was entry number 1000 here at Planned Obsolescence. It took me a little less than fiv...
Social Entrepreneurship and Design
For the last year or so, I’ve been an extended faculty member of Claremont Graduate University’s School of Information Systems and Technology, though that af...
Blog, Dammit
I finished up the looming-deadline project a full two days early, I’m happy to report, and am now turning to other phases of my summer work. I’ve got a zilli...
Trackbacks, R.I.P.
Today, somebody figured out how to overcome my trackback URL randomization and leave me 20-plus spam trackbacks. All from different IP addresses.
Procrastination
Major editorial project due June 1. Approximately 50% of work on project remains ahead of me. I hate deadlines.
Home Again
We’ve made it back to Claremont, a little less than a week after I set off for Louisiana. The trip was a whirlwind: I arrived there Monday night, R.’s movers...
Graduation Day
It’s graduation day here in Claremont, and for the first time ever we’re holding the ceremony outside, where it promises to be 75 and sunny and breezy, rathe...
Still Not Dead
Just grading. Classes ended Wednesday, senior grades are due today, and graduation’s in a little over a week. I’ve been completely buried under a big pile of...
HASTAC 1.1
The notes that follow are entirely my fault, and not at all the fault of the speakers. That said, I’m going to attempt to give a sense of what I take from va...
Call Me “Needle”
In Houston, on my way to North Carolina for HASTAC. If you’re there, look me up. And with any luck, there might be actual posting from the scene.
Good Lord
I don’t think I know anyone at Virginia Tech. But if any of you are there, I hope you and your colleagues and loved ones are okay.
Reserves? Depleted
To say that I’ve been a bad blogger of late is to underestimate the situation pretty seriously. There have been moments, over the course of the spring, when ...
Apply Directly to the Forehead
This is just to say that the guys who are tearing down the building that is directly outside my office window–and, conveniently, directly outside the window ...
At Last, Almost
R.’s been here for the last week, hanging out during his spring break, taking care of some odds and ends. It was fabulous having him here, as it always is, a...
On Effects
Timothy Burke has posted one of the most sensible assessments I’ve seen of the problems with “effects” research, spurred on by the vastly over-reported study...
MediaCommons Updates
Earlier this week, I spent a couple of days on the Jersey shore with the guys from the Institute for the Future of the Book, my MediaCommons co-coordinating ...
Time’s Arrow (But Not In A Martin Amisy Way)
I cannot stop looking at this. There’s something about the flatness of the subjects’ affect (apparently a learned pose, which sinks in sometime around age 4)...
You Have the Right to an Apology
There’s been a lot of talk about the need for an Air Traveler’s Bill of Rights of late, particularly since February’s JetBlue fiasco. I’m all for pressuring ...
Punishing California
Or, Threatening Other States Not to Follow Our Lead:
“Your date’s over, mister”
Good grief, do I love these women.
MediaCommons Ed Board Meeting
What little time I’ve got these days, outside of teaching, preparing to teach, grading, feeling guilty about not grading, and going to meetings, is being spe...
On the Ethics of Class Blogs
Grrr. I’m having an utterly infuriating time with air-l, one of the listservs that I’m subscribed to, because my subscription was apparently set up from my a...
That’s Better!
I’m positively breathless about it all: we worked all morning, and then we went out to lunch today, and lunch had spices in it, and then we went shopping, an...
It’s About Time
A quick post to say thanks to Chuck for letting me know that the New York Times has finally made its Times Select features free to students and educators wit...
Take Two
So, we were able to get out and take a bit of a walk and have a little lunch, and the walk and the lunch seem to have gone well, not least because I was able...
Sigh
Two of my favorite things in the world: spring break and Hawaii. Neither has quite panned out, this go-round.
The Big Novel (Redux)
I’m teaching my Big Novel class for the second time this semester, having struggled a bit while teaching it the first time during Spring 2004, and the class ...
Back to Life?
One can only hope. It appears that the various crises that resulted in my protracted silence have now all passed, and that I can do at least a little, partia...
From YouTube to YouNiversity
Henry Jenkins has a new article in this morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education, suggesting the ways that the field of media studies needs to shift in the fa...
Gosh, Is She Ever Going to Start Blogging Again?
Perhaps after I finish with this week’s four department meetings and two program meetings. Not to mention the departmental social event, and the conference c...
MediaCommons Update
Incidentally, one thing that I can write about is MediaCommons, which is making fabulous progress. We’ve migrated the site to a new, much more flexible platf...
Admitting the Obvious
I’m apparently on something of a hiatus, at the moment. In part it’s due to the issues I last wrote about (I’m too busy for much of interest to happen, and w...
The Curse of the Confidential (and the Tedious)
Part of the recent silence has been produced by the fact that everything I’ve been doing over the last however many days it’s been since I got back to Clarem...
On the Trail
So apparently what it takes to get me something to blog about is leaving town. I’m traveling today, and am currently sitting in a Crown Room in Atlanta’s Har...
I’m Not Dead Yet!
I’ve honestly just been too busy even to contemplate blogging, much less to write anything. (Or even read anything; I’m about as out of touch with bloglandia...
Halfway Back
I’m currently here, doing this. The return to the U.S. was only moderately painful (perhaps because mostly experienced in a state of denial and delirium). Th...
Against Phalloblogocentrism
A bit belatedly, a post mostly serving to bookmark for myself Scott McLemee’s IHE column growing out of the MLA blogging panel, with a very interesting conve...
Sign Me Up Already
Yes, I’ve drunk the koolaid. But holy crap. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Hail Fellow, Almost Met
An MLA moment I haven’t written about, as yet: I had three and a half minutes between meetings, at one point, and so I grabbed the laptop and headed for the ...
On Pleasure
File this under “things I really ought to have read a long time ago, but am just now getting to”: I’ve spent the last few days slowly working my way through ...
And Back Again
This has been a weird month. Weird enough that my last transatlantic flight seemed astonishingly easy. Heck, weird enough that I can use a phrase like “my la...
Happy New Year!
Greetings from Paris! I’ll attempt to catch up on The Story Thus Far later today. For now, a warm welcome to 2007, and best wishes that it be a happy, health...
2006
Report from the Blogger Meetup
Folks I’d met before, whom I was happy to see again:
The MLA, Day 2
Today was a heck of a day at the MLA. I actually experienced the conference, and the way it was meant to be experienced, I think.
The MLA, Thus Far
It’s pretty much been a non-MLA, due to complete and total physical collapse. When I arrived in Philadelphia, after the shuttle bus, the first plane, the shu...
It’s the Most Ridiculous Time of the Year
I woke up this morning around 3.30, almost on purpose–my wake-up call was set for 4.30, so I went ahead and got out of bed, rather than spend an hour wonderi...
Beginning, Again
Amusingly enough, my very last post of 2005 was about the difficulities of beginning a new large-scale project. That project, which I planned on spending my ...
Merry Christmas, from Prague
I’m now completely convinced that this place really is the capital of Christmaslandia. And I mean that in a good way. All week, we’ve wandered out in the eve...
Five Things You Quite Possibly Don’t Know About Me
The good news is that I get spared most memes; for whatever reason, they seem to pass me by. Liz just tagged me with this one, though, and since she complied...
That’s Just Mean
After waking up at 3 this morning, utterly unable to sleep, and after struggling both before and after lunch to take a stupid nap, but finding myself too exh...
The Failure of Open Peer Review?
About six months ago, I published a lengthy post, both on Planned Obsolescence and on if:book, about the future of peer review in electronic scholarly publis...
D?©calage Horaire
Our first full day in Prague was spent in a state of mild to moderate delirium. After we finally arrived at the hotel on the evening of the 18th, R. and I fo...
Waiting for the Bomb Squad*
[This post was written on 19 December; internet access has been a bit non-ideal, so things are coming on a bit of a time delay.]
Why I Have the Best Boyfriend Ever, In One Short Sentence
“That new haircut really makes you look thin.”
What’s Wrong with This Phrase?
With apologies to the student who wrote it: I know something is wrong with what follows, but I can’t quite make my brain kick up information about what and w...
How Not to Get There
I took a fairly long drive west yesterday, to go to a barbeque hosted by Bitch Ph.D. and attended by some other bloggy folks in the area. I’m always a little...
in memoriam literati
Ben has opened a discussion over at if:book about Gore Vidal’s recent BookForum interview, in which, among other things, he laments the death of American rea...
There’s Supposed to Be a Lull!
This is supposed to be a relatively slow week, the quiet before the storm: classes end tomorrow, and I won’t have any substantive grading to do until Friday,...
And Because That Isn’t Enough…
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/307748243/ "photo sharing")[this week](http://...
Teach Thyself
Thanksgiving was lovely, if much too fast. I spent a fair percentage of it just clearing my head and attempting to improve my attitude.
U.S. Copyright Office Announces New Exemptions
(crossposted from making MediaCommons: )
Deep Breath
Today’s going to be filled with nuttiness. And this time tomorrow, I’m going to be over halfway to Houston, on my way to BTR for Thanksgiving. I’m having one...
From McKenzie Wark, G4M3R 7H30RY
From “Agony”:
Whew
There is very little in the world like waking up on Friday and realizing you’ve survived the week, and that it was not even half as bad as you expected.
Now This Is What I Want to Sing Next Year in Choir
The Helsinki Complaints Choir:
Faculty Lecture
I’ve discovered something today: either I was a whole lot braver eight years ago, or a whole lot dumber. I’m giving a talk in our faculty lecture series in a...
Air iPod
Apple Teams Up With Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM & United to Deliver iPod Integration.
Notes on making MediaCommons
making MediaCommons is up and rolling, but we really need your help. One of our major benefactors is watching the planning site carefully, using it as a metr...
/whine
Thanks to all of you who commented and emailed yesterday and this morning; sympathetic noises were much desired, and much appreciated. Yesterday’s post arose...
Days I Wish I Were Anonymous
The thing that has taken up the vast majority of my time this semester — and something on the order of 95% of my emotional energy — is something I absolutely...
The Morning After
(cross-posted from making MediaCommons)
So Far, So Good
Senate races in Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania appear to have gone to the Democrats. I am, however, not counting my chickens as yet. I’m still waiting fo...
More on Making MediaCommons
As I mentioned during Flow, the guys at the Institute for the Future of the Book have helped my co-editor Avi Santo and I me create a planning site for Media...
Guess What I Did Yesterday
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/288930565/ "photo sharing")[the haircut](http:...
You Decide
She’s at it again. I’ve just gotten an email message from tagged.com asking me to confirm my new account with them. I didn’t sign up for any such account. An...
Squishy Cow
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/285023194/ "photo sharing")[squishycow!](http:...
I’m Just Saying
The person who happened upon The Anxiety of Obsolescence by googling how long to bleed to death lacerated liver has me quite worried.
This Is Why I Love Computers
What I know about music honestly (as George once said here) would not fill the thimble of a small-fingered seamstress. But this is an astonishingly cool visu...
Notes from Flow: Academic Publishing for the Digital Age
Notes from my session at Flow, below the fold. I’ll be cross-posting these at making MediaCommons shortly.
Notes from Flow: Watching Television Off-Television
More notes from a very interesting session of Flow.
Notes from Flow: On Taste
I’m posting some of my notes from yesterday’s sessions here. These notes should be taken primarily as my impressions of the conversations that took place; an...
Making “making MediaCommons”
Greetings from Austin, and the Flow conference. Things here have been fabulous so far — the conference organizers have developed a great new open format, in ...
Meeting Aunt B.
Happily, two other things have happened in the last couple of days that have begun to turn my mood around a bit, diminishing the stress somewhat and making i...
Thank You, DMV!
I’m reeling. Absolutely astonished. My worldview has been shaken to its core.
Is “Managing” Really What We Want?
Yesterday’s presentations were overall quite provocative, and have been wonderfully blogged by Bryan, James, and Laura. There’s been a tension throughout, ho...
Open and Closed
This morning’s first talk, by John Appley and Albert Borroni of Oberlin College, raises a very interesting problem: as the LMS becomes increasingly popular, ...
“A Loose Assortment of Annoying Tools”
Ooh, boy, is this going to be interesting. I’m arguing in my presentation tomorrow that (in a very small nutshell) the so-called “learning management system”...
NITLE Symposium
I’m in Portland for the weekend, attending a NITLE symposium on Learning Management Systems in the Liberal Arts College at Reed. It promises to be interestin...
Where I’ve Been, and Where I’m Likely to Be
While the panic has subsided (in no small part due to my having woken the fuck up and said NO, thank you, to a new administrative task that I was being asked...
Panic, or Something Close to It
I completely collapsed again last night, apparently not as recovered from my jet lag as I’d thought. I was dead asleep before 10 pm last night — but then wok...
La R?©tour
I’m back in SoCal, and so is my suitcase, though it decided to take a little breather in Houston halfway through the journey. (So yes, for those of you keepi...
Media Life
Right before I left for Paris and Vienna, I did an email interview with a writer from Media Life magazine who was working on an article about The Anxiety of ...
BlogTalk Reloaded 2.3
Panel 3 Anne Bartlett-Bragg and Ricardo Cambiassi
My BlogTalk Talk
So the talk went extremely well, I think; I got some good, challenging questions that I’m looking forward to pondering at some length. And I’d point you towa...
BlogTalk Reloaded 2.2
Panel 1 Elmine Wijnia & Ton Zijlstra and Uldis Bojars, John G. Breslin & Alexandre Passant
BlogTalk Reloaded 2.1
Keynote 1 Rod Smith (IBM) on Mashups
BlogTalk, Day 2
Did I mention that the presentations are available on video? They’re generally posted within several minutes of being completed. Which means that mine should...
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.7
Panel 5: Frank Mantek and Jeremy Ruston
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.6
Panel 4: Wolfgang Zeglovits and Raymond Elferink & Graham Atwell
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.5
Keynote 2: Matt Mullenweg, “WordPress and Jazz”
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.4
Panel 3: Alexandre Passant and Suw Charman
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.3
Panel 2: Lee Bryant and Dieter Rappold
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.2
Panel 1: Adolfo Estallela and Jan Schmidt
BlogTalk Reloaded 1.1
I’m going to attempt to blog as much of the conference as I can. This is the usual caveat about the fact that what follows is my notes from these talks; any ...
ONT to IAH to CDG to VIE
I haven’t exactly recovered from my d?©calage horaire yet, but the trip thus far has gone quite well. I got up at 4 am on Thursday and was, thankfully, ready...
On the CMS
JD asked me the other day about my experiences using Sakai, and how I liked it as compared with something like Moodle. This is something I’ve been thinking a...
Imminent BlogTalk
I’ve spent the last three days madly working on the article from which my talk at BlogTalk will be drawn. And late last night, as I was trying to fall asleep...
I Got Nothing
Except looming deadlines, and deadlines already past. I’ll be back with more scintillating thoughts soon, I hope.
A Dreary Little Tale of the Grocery Store
Every once in a great while, I get home from the grocery store and discover that they’ve failed to bag something I bought. It’s always annoying, but never wo...
Studio 60
Thanks to Liz and Lori, I spent a chunk of last night watching a little, tiny version of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
Best War Ever
I want to call attention to this for ever so many reasons, not least among them that it’s perhaps the first effective trailer for a book that I’ve ever seen.
Tick Tick Tick
Why do things like this only ever happen when you’re late?
Chicken, Meet Egg
Here’s a bit of irony*: Chest pain is a primary symptom of a heart attack. A panic attack can produce chest pain that mimics that of a heart attack. But othe...
Ridiculous Question I Should Have Long Since Learned the Answer To
Say you’re quoting a passage from a text, and within that passage, the author uses a parenthetical citation to refer to another text. Do you:
Former Students Make Good
So I really honestly did add them to my blogroll a couple of hours before Liz popped up in the comments, and had made a note-to-self to post an actual bloggy...
What Exactly Is the Deal with Technorati?
This time last week, something on the order of 72 blogs apparently linked here; today, it’s 58. (I’ve also dropped from a nice, solid rank of 36,000ish to we...
On Fakery and Fictiveness
So word is spreading throughout the blogosphere this morning that the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon was produced (actually, that link seems to have disappeared, at...
Graduate Employee Strike Abandoned
Good lord, but this is depressing.
kfitzpatrick
I just did something that was either absolute genius or pretty much evil. Or maybe just borderline stupid.
Linky Update
You might not have noticed without my pointing it out, but several of the links at right have changed. I now have my very own subdomain for networked teachin...
Bleh.
Someday I will discover the secret to making the first day of class not desperately dull. Alas, I haven’t figured it out yet. The dullness has in part to do ...
File That Under “Ouch”
In his new memoir, “The Discomfort Zone,” Mr. Franzen turns his unforgiving eye on himself and succeeds in giving us an odious self-portrait of the artist...
Potty Mouth
As long as I’m on the subject: one of the things that I actually have spent a bit of time worrying about — worrying, mind you, but not enough to really do an...
Back to (Professional) Life
I’ve had a few conversations about this here website of late, conversations with folks who seem uncomfortable with the personal nature of some of what I’ve b...
Okay, Make with the Good Wishes Already
It’s not to be helped or avoided at this point: it’s my birthday. The first one I’ve really dreaded in about… well, in pretty much precisely a decade. Intere...
Da-Na-Dah! Da-Na-Dah!
Okay, (a): Did you realize that Rocky is, and I shit you not, thirty years old, this year?
The New York Times, aka the Al Qaeda Newsletter (and Coupon Book)
On another note: what the New York Times looks like to the Right, courtesy of the Huffington Post. Make sure you roll over the masthead a few times. (Hat tip...
Guilt and Exhaustion
So I’m on the road again, in NYC, and I’m desperately trying to get done at least a small fraction of the stuff that has to be completed by a week from Tuesd...
Grading Policy
After a particularly obnoxious argument over a final grade a couple of semesters ago, I decided to dramatically revamp the grading policy that I include in a...
Free of Duty
There’s good news, for me, at least: because, on returning to the U.S., one goes through customs on the Canadian side of the border, and because one can’t ch...
To Delete, or Not to Delete
I spent much of last night lying awake, primarily suffering under what I’m pretty sure was a bit of bad salmon. I wasn’t anywhere near as sick as I could hav...
Paging Walter Kirn
Or anyone with Walter Kirn’s mailing address. I’ve got a book I’d like to send him.
Productivity, On the Road
I’ve written before about how productive I manage to be while I’m on the road, whether it’s a matter of working on planes or in hotels (something I’d swear I...
Other People’s Conferences, Part Two
So I’m in Montreal for the American Sociological Association meeting, where we’re doing some interviewing. I have to reiterate that there’s something lovely ...
So I Totally Lied
No way I can leave it at that. Not when there’s so much more to tell.
Yeesh
I’ll just say that today was not the ideal day to fly out of LAX, and leave it at that.
How to Do Things with Words
…and why it matters. Two unrelated links:
Other People’s Conferences
I’ve been in San Diego with my mother since Friday; she’s here for a conference, and I’m here as her date. The conference is that of a national organization ...
Free Advice from Aunt B.
And it’s really good advice, too: how to write an academic book that folks might actually want to read.
Ways in Which Today Sucks
1. I was awake from approximately 1.30 am to approximately 5.00 am, for no apparent reason. And when the sun rose, and when the construction guys commenced j...
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Somewhere or Other
I’m not sure I ever publicly admitted this, but over the last year-plus, while I was contemplating this past spring’s leave and the work that I’d do then, I’...
This Is the End
Sigh. My end-of-summer blues have kicked in full-force today. They’ve arrived at a moment that no doubt seems premature, but really, everything’s rushing to ...
Cyberinfrastructure and the Humanities
I’m still running pretty much a day behind–meant to post this yesterday, but never got to it. In any event, and in a hurry:
More from MediaCommons
I’m a day late on this — finishing that draft and other emergencies got in my way — but I want nonetheless to direct your attention to MediaCommons 2: renewe...
It’s a Draft!
A bouncing baby draft, and not a moment too soon.
Current Stats
The article draft nears completion: I’m at 32 pages, with about two pages to go. And then a whole heckuva lot of editing and revision. So lots of work to go,...
Want to See My Picture on the Cover
…on the cover of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
One Hundred Twelve
As in degrees.
Progress, Sorta
I’m now 28 pages into an article that I wanted to be around 25 pages long, and I’ve got at least another 5 pages of analysis and conclusion to write before t...
Search Inside
Hey, this is cool: the Amazon page for The Anxiety of Obsolescence now has “Search Inside” capability. So now, in addition to the bits of text I put up over ...
Initial Responses to MediaCommons
Ben Vershbow has posted a nice round-up of the reaction, over the last couple of days, to Monday’s MediaCommons announcement. There’s also a healthy comment ...
Introducing MediaCommons
(cross-posted from if:book)
Let the Reader Beware
There’s been a lot of hubbub about the Pynchon-speaking universe over the last couple of weeks, as Viking/Penguin let it be known that there would be a Big N...
New Editorial Policy
Hey: this site is not your own personal publicity organ. Any future comments that are clearly serving no other purpose than promoting your work–not contribut...
Community Building: Just Add Fire
Sitting here at my desk in the niche on the second-floor landing a little while ago, I started to realize that I had been hearing some kind of small aircraft...
Rice University Press 2.0
As I’ve mentioned several times of late (so many, in fact, that I’m not going to link; you can check out the “electrapress” category, if you’re interested), ...
The Key to the Dream, In Case You Care
So here’s what’s going on around here, that made my dream so open to Meg’s instant analysis: as I’ve mentioned before, my department has suffered some major ...
Shoot the Piano Player
I had this dream the other night, which I’d almost forgotten, but which came back to me just now for a reason I’m not at all sure of. I’d been drafted to be ...
I Am Speechless
Here are some quotes from a pro-abortion person, Miss Caroline Weber, who wrote an article at The Onion online magazine.
Upcoming Travel
Confirmed and ticketed:
Bikram Update
I’ve been attending relatively regular Bikram yoga classes since late May, and it occurred to me yesterday that the time might have come to take stock of my ...
Student Use of Wikipedia
Via if:book, an interesting draft policy statement proposed by Alan Liu on student use of wikipedia. (See also the followup discussion at Humanist and Kairos...
How Pissed Am I?
Seriously pissed.
What, Like Beer?
Subtitle: Why I Should Not Be Allowed to Listen to the News on the Way Home from the Gym.
Managed and Unmanaged
Managed this week:
There Was Something Back There About Practice, Right?
I realized over the weekend that I’ve been struggling for so long with the article I’m writing — or, to be honest, not writing — that it’s (a) now pretty hea...
On the Future of Peer Review in Electronic Scholarly Publishing
(cross-posted from if:book)
For Once, I’ve Got Nothing Whatsoever to Complain About
So, I’m sitting in Houston, waiting on the inbound aircraft that will take my outbound flight merrily back to the west coast. We’re going to be about an hour...
Send Me Back to the Desert
It’s been a fabulous visit, but I’m about up to here with both the heat and the humidity. Not to mention the crazy fattening food, the omnipresent alcohol, a...
There’s a Story Behind This I’m Too Tired to Tell
Two and a half hours on the runway in Houston. Fortunately, there was beer after that.
BlogTalk
I’ve had a paper accepted for this October’s BlogTalk Reloaded, and so it appears I’m headed to Vienna in October. This looks like a fascinating set of paper...
Tagging the Library
Under the category of things I’ve been meaning to note for a while: David Weinberger at Many-to-Many brought my attention to PennTags, a project of the UPenn...
Moves
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/167905668/ "photo sharing")[new office](http://...
Okay, Now I Believe It
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/167905755/ "photo sharing")[books!](http://www....
Housekeeping
It’s been a week of major housekeeping since I returned from New York: first, I needed to unpack all the stuff that I moved back from Louisiana, which arrive...
How Much Do I Fucking Love Heather Havrilesky?
A whole fucking lot.
New Comment Spam M.O.
So there was a piece of comment spam loitering hereabouts for a couple of days, while I debated what to do with it. I finally deleted it, as the last thing I...
Three Belated Notes from the Road
I flew back from NYC on Monday, and have been trying to recover and unpack from the trip, as well as unpacking the stuff that arrived from Louisiana while I ...
More on That Book
If you live in a market that carries Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, you may be able to catch me flogging The Anxiety of Obsolescence ...
Why I Am Too Dumb to Lead the Network Revolution
So, I noted some time back that I’d built a website for my book, including excerpts from the text (the introduction and first chapter, the opening section of...
Another Update from GSOC
This update on the strike at NYU, today, from GSOC:
Whoa.
For the first time in, oh, a little less than five years, my flight into LaGuardia today flew straight up over Manhattan. As in, I looked out my window, and ...
The Things That Occur to Me While I’m in the Shower
What’s the relationship between the Kantian sublime and Freudian sublimation? Is the apparent relationship merely a coincidence of translation? Or is there s...
Dragging My Heels
There’s an article that I need to write, one that, in theory at least, I’ve been at work on for some weeks. In reality, however, I never made it beyond the f...
Spambot University Library
Somebody else has noted this recently — I’m sorry I can’t remember who — but spambots are getting weirdly smarter. Another blog that I have editorial privile...
Bikram, Day 2
90 minutes is much, much longer than 60. It’s pretty rough at that moment, when my yogalates classes would have been wrapping up, to realize that there’s sti...
Bikram, Day 1
Holy moly. Having settled back in here in Claremont, and having spent the last five days mourning the loss of my beloved yogalates class, I managed to cart m...
Get Hip to This Timely Tip
Having picked up the 40 in Amarillo (despite hearing that Oklahoma City is oh-so-pretty), we sped on through Gallup, New Mexico, as well as Flagstaff, Arizon...
Technology on the Road
1. The rest area on Highway 287 a few miles north of Chillicothe, Texas has open wireless. I didn’t use it, but I was sorely tempted to blog from there, the ...
Watching the Net
We’re headed out of town sometime this afternoon, starting down the road toward SoCal.
An Update from GSOC
This update on the strike at NYU, today, from GSOC:
Twelve Steps Will Not Cut It
One sure way to measure your network dependency is to live in a building in which broadband is included with your rent, and see how you respond when the Inte...
Seditionist Creeps
This is one of the scariest things I’ve read in quite some time.
Commencement
Graduation just began back in Claremont, and it feels mighty weird not being there. Cooler, certainly; I’m not missing sweltering under the klieg lights in m...
Jazz Fest Photos
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/146178186/ "photo sharing")[Jazz Fest](http://www....
A Long-Overdue Open Letter to John Sexton
Dear President Sexton,
Let This Be a Lesson to You
This post has taken me an unconscionably long time to write. I didn’t have net access in Nassau–or, more accurately, I didn’t seek out net access in Nassau–a...
Product Placement
On another note: last night’s Alias contained what I have to call the worst moment of product placement in the history of crass commercialism. It went someth...
Last Gasp
This weekend, as others are celebrating the end of classes for the spring semester, I’m flying off to Nassau. This trip is in the main a girls’ trip, a long ...
Me & the Boss
Or, On Not Being a Bruce Springsteen Fan.
Jazz Fest
What I had intended was a series of daily updates. Of course, I also thought that I was going to use my hotel’s gym several times this weekend, so I clearly ...
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
I drove into New Orleans late last night, and will be heading out to Jazz Fest later this afternoon. Given the darkness, I wasn’t able to get an overall sens...
iSync and the Verizon CDMA RAZR V3c
Two posts this morning, the first of which makes the second one possible. Post the first:
Inexplicably
The alarm went off this morning at 4.30, waking me after a much too brief four and a half hours of sleep. I woke up groggy and dehydrated and otherwise feeli...
Futurology
I’m at USC today, in a room with a bunch of smart folks, thinking about the future of academic publishing. So far, the conversation has been fascinating. I’m...
Beginning the Weekend, a Little Bit Early
Good gravy, but I’m useless on a Friday afternoon. I’ve gotten nowhere in the drafting process today, not least because my usual morning yogalates class comp...
Drafting
I’m in the initial stages today of drafting an article that I’ve promised for a volume. And I’m having no fun whatsoever.
On Repositories
A very interesting post today by Jill Walker on institutional repositories, their benefits, and the ways that they fall short of the ideal networked publicat...
More Networked Texts
Partially just a couple of links for my benefit; partially stuff I’d like to discuss further at a less-rushed moment:
The Wealth of Networks
Henry over at Crooked Timber posted over the weekend about Yochai Benkler’s new book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Fr...
The Anxiety of Obsolescence
In preparation for the release of my book (also available here and here!), which should be out in something like a month, I’ve put some of the text online. I...
Spring Break
It’s spring break here in Baton Rouge; all the students in our apartment complex have decamped for the Florida coast, the restaurants are empty, traffic is l...
News Updates from the Land of the Shallow
Friday afternoon, I got into the skinny pants. The ones that have been hanging in the closet for at least the last nine months, untouched. And they looked mi...
Championship
Strange and interesting things that I have learned from the NCAA website in the course of an extended email exchange with a colleague about college sports:
The Silence
I have days when I really wish this blog were anonymous, or that I had another anonymous blog in which I could write without the kind of self-censorship that...
The Worst of It
The worst of it is that there’s now no one left to root for in the men’s final. As I told a colleague of mine via email last week, I am constitutionally inca...
I Can’t Watch
It’s just too painful. I’m going out for ice cream instead.
On the Importance of the Collective in Electronic Publishing
(cross-posted at The Valve)
Two of Eight
As you might guess, this week everybody’s pretty much all about the Final Four around here — both of them. It promises to be an interesting weekend here in B...
Yoga Brain
For the last month, R. and I have been exercising a lot. A lot. And well. It’s the first time since the marathon — hell, it’s the first time since longer ago...
We Now Return to Our Regular Cardiac Rhythm
A philosophical question that, at the moment, seems worthy of Berkeley: would they be my Tigers without the palpitations?
More Catching Up
This has not been the most productive week ever, I have to admit. Not only did I spend a fair chunk of time watching Brideshead, but two days went almost in ...
Anti-Performatives
DN points out in the comments down below that he called last night’s victory. This post is for DN:
Thank You, Michael B?©rub?©
From the bottom of my heart, for that most misguided first-round pick, which allowed me to snark at you in a way that the gods of March clearly heard.
Catching Up with the Rest of the World
Not only have I spent the week watching Brideshead Revisited (but on VHS; you remember VHS tapes, don’t you? I’d nearly forgotten that you have to rewind the...
So Much for Suspense
Over the last 24 hours, I’ve gotten hundreds of hits off of a pack of googlers looking for spoilers for the current season of The Sopranos. Which is odd. Her...
ElectraPress, Moving Forward
(crossposted from ElectraPress)
And They’re Out, in the Regional Semi-Final
I haven’t been paying much attention to LSU basketball this season, though my stepfather has repeatedly told me that I should. And I didn’t watch much of yes...
And Now for Something Completely Different
So I just got what is probably the best — and without question the cheapest — french manicure I’ve ever gotten. Weigh that on the one side.
Categories
Hey — how come none of you guys told me that all of my category links in the archive menus were broken?
Is it Just Me, Or Is This Beginning to Sound a Little Familiar?
Remember back when I was asking all those questions about why an FBI task force had shown up on campus asking questions of a Venezuelan-American colleague?
The Sopranos, Season 6
And yes, we need a SPOILER ALERT already…
Gee, Now What?
I confess to having a very bad case of “yeah, but what have I accomplished lately,” something against which I’ve struggled pretty much my entire adult life. ...
Now to Commence the Lying Around Reading Novels Portion of Our Program
The best news I’ve gotten in a long time: that the index, completed and submitted about an hour ago, is pleasing unto my publishers.
Further Update
Again, via email:
Update
Miguel’s story has now been picked up by the Pacific News Service.
Good Grief
This came in just now, via email:
The State of the Forgotten Part of the Union Address
From Katrenema, a short documentary on the state of New Orleans, over six months later. It’s devastating, partially due to the filmmaker’s sense that the ima...
Things I Really Ought to Get Done Today
— Finish the index, already, which is already four days overdue and still 80 pages from complete. — Call the cable company to make sure we’ve got HBO in time...
Thinking about the M
Last time I went to SCMS, in 2004, was I think the first conference the organization had held since the addition of the M to its name and, as I’ve snarked ab...
While Watching the Oscars
Does it strike anybody else that all this “there’s no place else to really see a movie other than the big screen” stuff smacks just a teeny bit of desperatio...
A Moment of Unrepentant Horn Self-Tooting
So I walk into a session after lunch on Friday, a workshop entitled “An Economy of the Gift”: Should Scholarship Be Available for Free?, where I am handed a ...
Documenting the Self
For archival purposes (as well as for anyone else interested) this is a link to the page of links I used in my talk yesterday.
SCMS-ward Bound (2006 edition)
After what seems like way more hassle than was strictly warranted for a little ERJ jaunt from BTR to IAH, I’m sitting in my favorite President’s club waiting...
February
Where, exactly, did it go?
Identity Protection Matters
I’m not sure why, but I’m a bit obsessed with a piece of spam I got earlier today, one of the bajillions of “update your PayPal account” messages I get each ...
Shouting Down a Well
Gee, spend one little day traveling and the blogosphere goes a wee bit bonkers over some article in the New York Times about how some professors seem to thin...
Yes, Still
Have I mentioned, in my many rants about electronic scholarly publishing that one of the benefits of a new system such as ElectraPress would be that no one ...
Galatoire’s
Taking the opportunity to gloat about being in Louisiana while I can: last night, my parents took me and my sister, who was visiting this weekend, to the new...
Almost the Opposite of Schadenfreude
Surely there should be a Germanic compound word for this — not the shameful joy one takes in someone else’s suffering, but the feeling best captured by that ...
Indexing Bleg
I need help with a bit of phrasing, index-wise. A bit of necessary background: at one point in the book, I discuss at length the various pronouncements of th...
And Then There’s the Other Problem
Which is my complete and total inability to maintain focus on the index. I am much too easily distracted.
The Anxiety of Indexing
I begin to suspect that, if anything, I’m too obsessive-compulsive for this job.
Indexing
Proper names, searchability of.
More Non-Rhetorical Questions
Am I completely nuts for attempting to do my own index? Have any of you done any indexing? Do you have advice on method?
Homesque
I’m back in Claremont for a few days, for a couple of departmental events. Because I’ve rented out the condo, I’m spending these few days crashed on a friend...
Party of One
At some point in December, during a conversation over dinner with one of R.’s colleagues, I said something that prompted him to hand me Anneli Rufus’s Party ...
Anxiety, Obsolescence, Etc.
So the forthcoming book now has a page at B&N.com and Amazon. Which seems to suggest it’s actually going to come into physical being in the world at some...
Absolute Madness, I’m Sure
You know what’s crossing my mind these days? Attempting to migrate this here blog over to WordPress. WP is both faster and lighter, and is much more integrat...
The Future of the Book
(Crossposted from ElectraPress.)
Bleh
Suffering a bout of post-travel flatness. Wishing to be back in bed, or perhaps under it, where it’s darker. Will hope to resume normal operations shortly.
Remix Culture
Sounds to me like last night we had the first SOTU put together entirely out of samples of previous recordings.
Frey Them!
So I spent much of yesterday attempting to compile my meager thoughts about l’affaire Frey into something halfway worthy of a post. After all, this little cr...
Not a Loser, Thank You Very Much
Via unrequited narcissism, the affirmation I’ve been waiting for:
Say Goodbye
News comes this afternoon that ogged‘s taking down the shingle. Things in the blogosphere feel different to me already.
I Heart N Y
I’ve been in New York for the last couple of days, and though I’ve had the computer with me, and have been having a fabulous time, I haven’t felt the least b...
You Know What You Can’t Take a Sabbatical From?
Letters of recommendation.
Advocating
I spent much of yesterday in the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Library, reading through the microfilm archive of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate, the prede...
Software I Love Right Now
— OmniOutliner Pro, whose praises I’ve sung in the past, and which continues to rock. In conjunction with Joel Schoonmaker’s KGTD scripts, OOPro becomes a fe...
In the Archive
I finally get it — why researchers develop archive fever. I spent part of yesterday afternoon in the special collections of the LSU Libraries, and am complet...
Not Just a Rhetorical Question (or Three)
Is the plural of “roof” roofs or rooves? Is one U.S. usage and the other a Britishism? Which is which?
So What’s Up in Canada, Eh?
In the last few days, I’ve gotten hundreds of hits from various Canadian browsers, nearly all of whom have come from some variant on a Google search for obso...
How It’s Supposed to Be
Sabbaticals are good. But, like, really no-kidding good. I spent the early part of yesterday in my pajamas, in front of the computer, working on the new proj...
Home Again, and Home Again
The trip to SoCal to gather the last of my stuff, cram it in my car, and turn the condo over to my tenant (which concept weirds me out a bit) passed in a bit...
On the Road
Yesterday:
More on Electronic Scholarly Publishing
A bibliography-in-progress, bringing together resources and discussions on electronic scholarly publishing, as well as other links useful to particular issue...
Pardon Our Dust
Site design conversion in progress. Things are likely to be wonky for an hour or so, and then just… different. Change is good, folks. It’s long past time.
On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements
(Or, Remaking the Academy, One Electronic Text at a Time) cross-posted from The Valve:
Some Months Later
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/82512251/ "photo sharing")[detail from painting](htt...
Lingua Franca
I’ve been having this series of moments of late that can only be adequately described using R.’s wonderful phrase, “light dawns over Marblehead,” the moment ...
In Paris
We took an early morning train from Amsterdam to Paris yesterday and, after checking into our pretty over-the-top wonderful hotel here, wandered down to the ...
Two Thousand Six
I’m hard at work this morning on a hefty post that I’ll hope to publish soon. In the meantime, a quick Happy New Year to you all, and a wish that all your pr...
2005
Beginning
R. and I were talking yesterday just before lunch about the strange anxieties and difficulties that I’m having with writing right now. Some of it’s been abou...
Here and Now
The end of the year comes in a great rush of late — the leap from Thanksgiving to the end of classes; the sprint from the end of classes to finish grading; t...
Warming Up
A sabbatical is a good thing. As is the change of scenery that comes with a trip abroad. R. and I are definitely on vacation, but these two weeks are very mu...
Guilt-Free
There is something quite lovely about reading everybody’s early MLA posts and knowing that, not only am I totally not going there this year (for only the sec...
Amsterdam
[](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqf/77977358/ "photo sharing")[Amsterdam, from hotel roo...
Merry Christmas, All
Thus far, R. and I have managed to survive our holidays with only a modicum of fallout, which is not a thing to be said lightly. In fact, it may well be temp...
Next Year, Miracle-Ear for Everybody!
The subject line of this post is what I muttered at my mother after several hours of hanging out with my family, each and every last member of which is sudde...
Free
It’s taken me a few days since arriving in Baton Rouge to clear up the last details of the semester, but grades are now filed, comments have all been sent to...
Almost
Not too much left:
Add Them to the List
Of institutions w