Manchester Digital Laboratory Thursday 8th June 2017 09.00-17.00 The Sociological Review Foundation is delighted to announce our forthcoming workshop using graphic novel methods to present social research. We invite applications to take part in a Graphic Novel Workshop with Tony Lee. If your research involves incorporating graphic methods or you are simply interested in doing […]
When we talk about the possibilities which digital media offer for rethinking scholarly communication, it’s easy to slip into the trap of thinking this ambition is a new one. We counterpoise the ‘new’ and the ‘old’, the innovative and the traditional, the digital and the analogue. In doing so, we obscure past projects which sought to rethink […]
From Work’s Intimacy, by Melissa Gregg, loc 3594-3609: Describing the impact of the BlackBerry in 2006 –just before the iPhone changed mobile computing for keeps –Research in Motion’s John Balsillie explained his bestselling devices as “latency eliminators.” According to this logic, Balsillie argued, “successful companies have hearts … and intrinsic force that makes the whole […]
hrough Design Fiction (e.g. Zero Hours) Through Social Fiction (e.g. Low Fat Love) Through Visual Journalism (e.g. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt) Through Visual Biography (e.g. Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City) Through Graphic Novels (I lack examples of this – I’m also aware the distinction between ‘graphic novels’ and ‘visual […]
This is a really nice description from Craig Lambert’s Shadow Work of a problem I describe in a forthcoming paper as the multiplication of communication channels. From loc 3038-3054: The mushrooming number of communication channels spins off another type of shadow work. At one time, to reach a friend, you could send a letter or […]
An extract from Social Media for Academics In recent years we’ve seen the notion of ‘internet addiction’ enter the popular consciousness. As a self-description it’s sometimes invoked facetiously, sometimes desperately and occasionally in a way which combines the two. It would be silly for me to try and take a stance on such a complex […]
The Persistent Conversation minitrack at HICSS is back. We invite you to submit your work to the upcoming 50th anniversary HICSS. The CFP is here: [1]http://www.hicss.org/#!persistent-conversation/c236g ABOUT THE MINITRACK: A significant consequence of communication technologies is that conversations are no longer ephemeral and volatile. Most conversations mediated by technology leave a persistent record and become […]
This is a short preliminary to a longer post I’ll write in the near future. I’ve become ever more convinced over the last couple of years that project management software, such as Slack and Basecamp, will become integral features of most working environments. Perhaps eventually to the extent that e-mail is. In fact e-mail is […]
An email sent to the entirety of SpaceX by Elon Musk, as quoted in Ashlee Vance’s book about him, pg 238-239: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. […]
Thanks to Nick Kaufman for this great example of how social media can be used to overcome the limits imposed by academic jargon. It took me a minute to get the hang of what they’re trying to do with this project but I really like it. It’s produced by the MIT Community Innovators Lab.
This isn’t academic per se but I can easily imagine how a similar format could be used: The Journal of Academic Videos is obviously leading the way here.
I was fortunate to meet Tim Maughan at the Digital Sociology conference in New York last month. Along with Sava Saheli Singh, he’s been exploring how design fiction can be used to communicate sociological ideas. This is how Sava and Tim describe design fiction: Design fiction is a term first coined by Julian Bleecker and […]
A note to self as much as a post for other people: Through Design Fiction (e.g. Zero Hours) Through Social Fiction (e.g. Low Fat Love) Through Visual Journalism (e.g. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt) Through Visual Biography (e.g. Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City) Through Graphic Novels (I lack examples of […]
The relative brevity of blogging vis-à-vis other modes of publication is often understood as reflecting the putative superficiality of the former. However there are virtues to brevity which are too little appreciated. Chris Dillow had a lovely (and brief) post on his blog about this a few months ago: 1. Longform writing is narcissistic. It presumes […]
After a long period of monopolising academic discourse, European universities went into decline as classical scholasticism, which was primarily inward and backward looking, gave way to the ideas of Enlightenment. Intellectual development moved outside the walled gardens of academia, because enlightenment thinkers shifted their various discourses into the realm of correspondence, creating a Republic of […]
One of the most obvious forms that digital scholarship can take is making ‘outputs’ public that would otherwise remain private. So for instance making slides available online after a talk or lecture. When I use slides, which is pretty irregular, I tend to make them available as part of the process of preparing. I’ll produce some slides, […]
There’s a particularly incisive rehearsal in the Guardian of what has become a well established critique of TED. There’s a lot of this I agree with but I nonetheless find the general thrust of the argument really problematic: So what is TED exactly? Perhaps it’s the proposition that if we talk about world-changing ideas enough, […]
There’s a great post on Savage Minds here which discusses a new anthropology podcast series. It makes some important points about the potential value of academic podcasts: Its fascinating to listen to the interview version of an article (in fact, its much more convenient than reading the article!) but its even more fascinating to have […]
My getting started with social media bundle has pretty much every training resource I’ve ever produced in it. Some collections of other people’s stuff about Twitter, blogging and podcasting. All my Prezis from social media workshops. The LSE Impact Blog’s Twitter list and Twitter guide. Go through the former list, follow anyone who seems interesting and Twitter will […]
