Agentic Shift

*clicking persistently, feverishly because this stupid computer is so slow*

Not really. That was one example of Milgram’s
"agentic shift" from class yesterday. It was one of the more
interesting sessions we’ve had this semester. I referred students to
chunks of Postman’s chapter on "The Ideology of Machines: Computer
Technology." They collaborated to generate questions for their chunk,
which, after fifteen or so minutes, was passed into the hands of the next group
who took up the work of mustering a response. A rich discussion spun out
of this simple arrangement: "computer" as it referred to a
person
who computes (pre-1940), voice bots and sometimes-undetectable
artificial intelligence, the technopolist ideology that relishes human-as-machines
models of efficiency, generally subscribing to the view that we are at our best
when we are most functionally productive (no excess) and refined in our acts
(without waste or deviation).

I’m still trying to get a grip on the idea of "agentic
shift." I haven’t read Milgram’s Obedience to Authority: An
Experimental View (1974)
. So it’s only a best guess that agentic
shift
is a rhetorical event. Is it more than displaced agency?
Shirked responsibility? Does it flourish in the technological high
tide?

I’m wondering about this especially as it seems to relate to video
gaming. I want to be careful what I say because I’m not up on the latest
buzz in video game studies–only know that they’re here. But if agentic
shift
is, as Postman calls it (acknowledging Milgram), the name of the process
"whereby humans transfer responsibility for an outcome from themselves to a
more abstract agent," then video gaming, and maybe all encounters with
technical machinery, fit. So maybe it’s possible to have a group agentic
shift
(a collective of transference?), in which the group *thinking social
software here* transfers responsibility to an abstract agent-authority: the
software. Is this too much of a reach from Milgram’s Yale experiments or does this simply affirm–in a modern context–what Milgram proved forty years ago?

One Fell Off and Bumped His Head

In a coffee shop this morning, I waited patiently while the Fordists (hey,
it’s a Ford, where else am I going to take it) tapped and prodded my vehicle,
changing out the oil and detailing it through a DMV inspection. Need to
renew the tags, and someone with authority and license has to sign the paper
affirming everything (except the driver) is road safe. Torn wiper
blades and a burnt-out tail light. WTF! You’d be sick on my behalf
if I told you how much they charged. I had to have the
inspection–today.

But I was at a coffee shop walking distance from the car shop. I was
sipping on some exotic, way-too-strong coffee. You know the kind that’s so
potent it makes your tongue feel dry? That’s the kind of coffee I was
drinking. Empty place, since it’s Monday morning, eight o’clock. I
was reading Scholes. Chapter four: A Flock of Cultures. All about
the etymology of canon and Hegel’s brand of history and problems with
Great Books and conceptions of Western Civilization. It turns to
suggestions for curricular design, and I’ve been meaning all day to write about
it, to expand the few notes I scribbled down. Maybe tomorrow.

It was an empty place, but a dad and his young daughter (guessing at the
relationships) took seats at the table next to me. The girl was two-ish,
chiming through songs (like the one about a crowd of monkeys jumping on the bed–see entry title). The dad was fumbling with a huge brownie (breakfast?),
dividing it into adult and child-sized portions. Now that I’m writing
this, I can’t remember exactly why I thought this was relevant to Scholes, to my
day, the oil change, or you.

So I think it was the daughter’s sense of unfairness in the brownie
apportionment. She was really young, but she knew immediately that her dad
was eating the bigger piece of the brownie. She kept asking him, "Da,
why you eating da big one?" And he tried to answer, "Because I’m
hungry." And she asked again. He tried a different answer,
"Because it is yummy." She kept asking. Geez. So I
was eavesdropping, but they were only four feet away, and I was still reading
Scholes with most of my attention. Her curiosity was incredibly
persistent, and it became more emphatic on the word "big."
"Da, why you eating da big one?" He didn’t say,
"Because I’m big, too." You know, spatial relationships,
proximity, size: early (and lasting) understandings of social justice.

(barb)Wired Teaching Environs

 

Administrators with responsibilities for writing programs will

6. develop equitable policies for ownership of intellectual
property that take effect before online classes commence.

After reading the C’s
statement on teaching, learning and assessment in digital environments
on
Friday, I’ve been wondering about the risks of working at the intersection of
writing instruction and digital environments without an explicit,
institutionally endorsed set of policies addressing intellectual property
in such spaces. I don’t worry that I’m at risk, but I have started
to ponder the ethics of graded, compulsory blogging in a FY comp course like the
one I’m teaching now. I am naive on this front, since I’m not sure I understand
some of the issues knotting up at this nexus. It’s clear to me that students own their writing. It’s clear to me that I can make reference to their writing, cite passages, model it for other courses and so on, with a student’s permission. But are tech-enriched writing pedagogies treading on student privacies, refashioning a safe, protected environ into a perilous venue underscored by the potential for public critique and effects beyond the
course? In dedicated face-to-face courses and dedicated
online courses (barricaded behing protections, authorizations) this seems much simpler than in grafted or hybrid courses, where
traditional methods swirl in the current of emergent technologies and digital
mediums. And with this, I’m back to a lot of questions, ones mainly about
the teacher’s agency in convening such ventures without having mapped the juts
and crags. Where to turn in this exploration absent an "equitable
[policy] for ownership of intellectual property"?

100 Things

En media rays

1. I played hoops in college, and although I’ve never
been much above 6-5, I was always listed as 6-6 and 210. It really was
the shoes. That false inch of added height never was much help in the
post, where I wrestled for position most of the time.
2. I find that Levis fit better than Lees, Wranglers, Old Navy–to say
nothing of sweat pants, jogging suites, etc.
3. Berbere sauce on spaghetti pasta–best meal. Chicken or beef doesn’t
matter. My good friend E. is responsible for this.
4. First car was a four-door 85 Ford Tempo–royal blue. Its transmission
crapped out.
5. Born and raised on a parcel of the sold-off Chippewa Indian Reservation
in rural middle Michigan. The reservation was much larger before it was
sold into pieces of land, bit by bit by bit.
6. College literacy caught fire on Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Read ’em all. Started
with Breakfast of Champions and loved the image-doodles.
7. In 1991, my senior year of high school, I set a Beal City High School
record for blocked shots in a season with 91. It’s been broken since.
8. All-time favorite basketball teams: 88-89 Pistons. Hands down. More
recently, Stampede–both of them. But I’d rather watch the college game
when it’s all said and done.
9. My parents met in college at Central Michigan U.–my big brother’s
alma mater, too. I attended for one year before transferring to Park.
10. During the spring of my first year of college, I worked nights stocking
shelves at Kroger. My aisles were pet food and soap. I spent long hours,
late at night, "facing" the small cans of cat food, building
up resentment toward cat spoilers who bought the expensive stuff and mussed
my shelves each day.
11. I think I developed a kind of allergic sensitivity during those hours
in the soap and chemical aisle. Now, when I shop (every other week, D.
and I trade off), I avoid those aisles, only venturing in if I absolutely
must.
12. Class president all four years of high school. And a year younger
than my peers. So what if nobody ran against me after that first election,
freshman year.
13. Childhood don’t go without: Green Lantern Underoos. Crazy for the
Hulk, too.
14. Had three surgeries in 1995: one on my right ankle (bone spurs) and
two on my right shoulder (scope and reconstruction). Too many sprains
and dislocations. And then there was a full week of medical I-don’t-know
when I sliced a four-incher in the top of my scalp–accidentally…long
story, that.
15. Kept a regular opinion column in my college newspaper, The Stylus.
Learned the perils of biting commentary there.
16. Hablo espanol bastamente, pero lo escribo mejor. Shouldn’t that be
the other way around?
17. I was never in the second grade. Went straight to third from first,
like a disoriented base-runner in kickball.
18. Wasn’t any good at baseball, either. Sat on the bench for most of
one season with the Fireballs–the third place team in a four-team league.

19. My best dog was Tony. Got him at the Isabella County pound for five
bucks. Had to have him put to sleep on the Sunday after the C’s in Minnesota–the
only C’s I presented at. Tony was a Cairn Terrier mix (part animal, part
human).
20. In 1984, on the long bus ride home, bullies took my Detroit Tigers
baseball cap and threw it out the window. My mom drove me to find it alongside
Winn Road, in front of a horrid-smelling farm.
21. Childhood homes were heated mostly by wood. J. and I had to pitch the
wood into the basement every Sunday, one wheelbarrow load at a time. One
would pitch; the other would stand in the basement and stack. Many Sundays
devolved into wood-pitching fights, where we would throw the blocks of wood
with the intent of hitting each other. Brutal.
22. Favorite fishing spot: off the dolomite pier at Nates’ Marina, Drummond
Island, Mich. Lots of rock bass hiding in the shadows under boats. We
could see them in the water.
23. Spent Saturday mornings bowling as a kid. Rolled the rock for Orange
Crush at Chippewa Lanes.
24. Dad is a land surveyor. I have an affinity for mechanical pencils
because of it.
25. My son’s birth certificate lists my age as 16 and my partner D.’s
age as 18 when Ph. was born in Missouri. We were both in Michigan at the
time he was delivered–an Aries.
26. Prefer hardwood floors and linoleum to carpet. Unless I’m traveling.
Then I like to emulate Bruce Willis in Die Hard: "Nothing
better than taking your shoes off and feeling the carpet after a day on
airplanes."
27. I can’t find the source, but I like the mantra from Steven Segal,
"Superior effort, superior mental attitude." Yet I’ve never
watched an entire Segal movie. He’s a tough-guy actor, right?
28. First video game addiction? Serpentine–a C64 cartridge and a Slik
Stick. Hours upon hours. Once we had a disk drive (Christmas, 1985), it
was Lance Haffner Final Four–all text basketball. Not long after that,
I figured out how to hack the files to make my own teams.
29. Along Winn Road, the ditches often filled with water during the winter
months. At the bus stop, we’d take turns daring each other to test the
ice. It was only waist deep. Would it hold? I was the youngest, so it
was common for me to get on the bus with a soaked pant leg. But it happened
to Billy N. almost as often; he was older than me, but he would always
take the dare.
30. I worked as an insurance claims adjuster for thirteen months in Saginaw
and Detroit.
31. Shh. Lions fan.
32. I don’t have favorite beer. More of a sampler, especially of local
brews. Cheap domestic pilsners don’t bother me; lite beers don’t bother
me. Wine? Shiraz over anything else.
33. Had an Adam computer for a few years, mainly because Dragon’s Lair
was a blast.
34. Most humbling work experience: United Cerebral Palsy weekend caregiver.
Worked 32 hours on weekends for several months as an undergrad.
35. One movie I could watch over and over: The Truman Show. Soundtrack
is appealing, too. In fact, I’m listening to it now.
36. I lived in Hazel Park, three blocks from Eight Mile, while I worked
in Detroit. Marveled at the old racetrack when I drove by.
37. More than anything about home-owning, plumbing troubles me. I’ve cobbled
through a few hellacious plumbing projects; supply lines are worse than
drains. And I come from a family with simple solutions to conundrums that
present me with big challenges.
38. We once had a dog named Jake who ate through quarter-inch cables.
He was a wild, writhing, horribly out-of-control Rhodesian Ridgeback.
I don’t know what happened to him, which makes me think one of my uncles
took him "hunting." That’s what they said when they, you know,
left and never came home.
39. When my mom died in the summer of 1997, I quit my job in Detroit and
moved to KC. Still not sure why she died. Just didn’t wake up that Wednesday
morning from the age of 48.
40. Bill Laimbeer and me. I took this number in high school and college.
Have a fondness for 40 still.
41. I was a performative minimalist in sports: one touchdown in high school
football, one dunk in a h.s. basketball game, one dunk in a college basketball
game, one double-double in college. This is important, considering I was
never the best player on any of those teams.
42. For lunch lately, I’ve been having one Diet Coke, a Campbell’s Soup
At Hand, and a bag of microwave popcorn. Every workday of the week. And
I’ve cut ten pounds since the holidays, without nary an instance of exercise,
unless teaching counts as exercise.
43. I like cutting the grass, but I’m not into the pristine, homogenous
suburban lawnscape.
44. Purple lilac bushes are my yard decor of choice. There were huge ones
in the front when I was a kid–big enough to hide inside, like a plush-cover
fort with bees swirling.
45. I spent a bunch of recesses inside writing, "I will not…"
in elementary school.
46. I don’t have a full scale family tree nor an abiding interest in my
personal genealogy, but I learned more last fall about my great great
great grandmother, Cora Matilda (Hamilton) Roe (2/13/1870-11/4/1926).
She was married at age 13 to Ephriam Roe. Rather young, since he was thirtysomething.
It’s disputed whether Ephraim was from an Ojibwa Tribe. I have papers
that say he was and papers that say he wasn’t. What’s the paper worth?
Or the information on it? He died near Edmonton in 1929.
47. I wish I made more time for playing euchre. And for reading.
48. I sleep on my back and side mostly. Log position. Almost never remember
dreams.
49. My wallet has an imprinted buck head on it, like it was designed for
a hunter. I never even went through hunter’s safety, although most of my
friends did. My take on hunter’s safety: stay the hell out of the woods
when there are guns blazing.
50. I’ve cut my own hair since 1992. Even the crooked ones were free (or
about 15 cents per cut if you figure the cost of the clippers).
51. If I was stranded with one television channel: Food Network. I don’t
have much time to cook, but I’m endlessly wowed by the combinations, the
ways of making.
52. In tenth grade, I came up with the winning homecoming float idea for
our class: Ollie North says, "Shred the Red Raiders."
53. I thought I could do this in one sitting, but it’s late. More tomorrow.
54. I’ve endured a broken left wrist, four shoulder dislocations, a separated
shoulder, a half-dozen ankle sprains and numerous stitches from gashes,
mostly from basketball.
55. I was at the last Grateful Dead concert–Soldier Field, summer of
1995. Drove straight back to KC in time for Lollapalooza at Sandstone
Amphitheater, which included Sinead O’Connor and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
56. I am–like my mom was–ultra-sensitive to poison ivy. I can pick it
up from pollen just by walking through the woods. Had the poison ivy every
summer that I’ve lived in Missouri.
57. I like walking. Unless it’s inside a shopping mall. Then I suffer
from full-body lethargy. Malls exhaust me.
58. Clothing taste: comfort over style. And a weak sense of style, too.
59. D. and I have more synthetic houseplants than real ones. We can’t
work out a watering schedule for the real ones. Authentic plants either
drown or dry up.
60. In the German tradition, we opened gifts on Christmas Eve most of
my childhood. Although we didn’t have the candles on the tree (which is
my understanding of the cause for unwrapping on the Eve rather than the
next morning), it had the practical effect of allowing the adults to sleep
in. And they did. Didn’t matter if the kids were up at five.
61. First CD: Tom Petty, Full Moon Fever. Still have it, but I
don’t listen to it much.
62. I never learned to dive. My dad is a terrific swimmer, but I had too
active an imagination to go head first into a lake. What’s below the murky
surface? Rocks, stumps, lake sturgeon…. Terrifying.
63. A combination of teachers whose good advice I followed persistently
kept my interest and compelled me to study English, composition, rhetoric,
and everything under the Sun that converges within this sprawling, rich
field.
64. Places I’ve spent six weeks studying or training without ever taking
up residence: Denver, Colorado and Xalapa, Veracruzana.
65. I prefer cheap shampoo.
66. I like Blue Moon ice cream better than any other flavor. What flavor
is it? Can’t be sure. Maybe that’s why I like it.
67. In the summer of 1992, my brother and I moved the entire Chemistry
Department at Central Michigan University, cart by precious cart, into
its new facility. Ultraviolet spectrometers, centrifuge equipment and
so on.
68. Days until my 30th birthday.
69. I tend to keep a messy office and a clean desk.
70. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Nerd Ropes. Black licorice. In that order.
71. Most interesting place during my study-stay in Mexico: La Plaza de
Los Tres Culturas in D.F. where protesters were killed and forcefully
dispersed just before the ’68 Olympics. After that, Xico. Then Huatulco.
72. I’ve been in my current full-time job–athletics administration–for
almost seven years.
73. I don’t care if it’s grilled over charcoal or gas-heated lava rocks,
as long as it tastes good.
74. Year I was born. On Cinco de Mayo: Taurus.
75. No tattoos or piercings.
76. I was once my son’s brother. No joke.
77. Coca-Cola over Pepsi-Cola. Had Pibb in my great-grandparents’ Sheboygan,
Wisc., basement before it made its popular comeback.
78. Took freshman comp with Dr. Phil Dillman at CMU. Scored a B, he became
a friend, gave me lots of books in exchange for yard work. When I visited
Michigan in the summer of 1993, I drove him to Ann Arbor where he was
diagnosed with the cancer that took his life a two years later.
79. Never cared for pet rodents, but we kept rabbits and a guinea pig
(who was blind from chewing through an electrical cord).
80. I have started a lot of books I haven’t finished yet. Lots.
81. Wore size 14 shoes at the age of 13. Still do. Well, no, not the same
pair of shoes.
82. Early in high school, I refused to write an essay declaring my religious
values on the grounds that it wasn’t anybody’s business. After a parent-teacher
conference (thick with teacher-talk centered on my transgression), we
agreed that I would write it for my mom, who was an early childhood teacher.
She gave me a B, noting that I didn’t spend sufficient time on it.
83. I don’t care for golf.
84. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.
85. Two vivid oral reading memories: A Summer in the South with
my mom, and Where the Red Fern Grows with my uncle G.
86. My first time on an airplane was when I was in kindergarten. My brother
and I flew with two of our grandmothers to Seattle shortly after Mt. St.
Helens erupted. Ashy.
87. I keep a mileage log, noting how much gas and how many miles every time
I fill up. It’s ridiculous, according to D., since I never use the data
for anything. It’s just spinning into a data-list, vehicular narrative.
What could be more productive while the fuel flows? Windshield washing?
88. I have a difficult time telling people no when they approach me for
favors. As a result, I get buried in odds and ends.
89. On the first "official" night of the Gulf War, I went by myself
to watch Edward Scissorhands for a review speech I had to deliver
in a high school class.
90. My older brother was a wiz with Legos. We had a small, white suitcase
filled most of the way with them. One time he built a grand ship–far
better than anything I could have done. I carried it to the top bunk and
released it into the air. It flew straight to the wooden chair where,
when it landed, it smashed into bits.
91. Payback for the time he busted a rotten squash on my face, giving
me my first bloody nose.
92. Car radio auto-set on 1. R&B and hip-hop, 2. Adult Urban, 3.Kansas
NPR, 4. UMKC NPR, 5. Suburban Pop, 6. Hip-hop.
93. My elbows and pinkies are double-jointed.
94. I shoot pool left handed, except when I play on Yahoo! Then I use the
mouse with my right hand, which explains why I’m woeful in both settings.
95. I rooted for the Cleveland Browns passionately during the Bernie Kosar
era–Ozzie Newsome, Kevin Mack, Webster Slaughter, and on and on. I was
ridiculed for wearing a Browns jacket during most of junior high. Now
Ph. wears it when he wants to sport a "vintage" look.
96. I played the trombone for a few weeks. Beyond that, I’m musically inept.
97. D. and I knew each other for 17 years before we got married last summer.

98. My first professional conference was the C’s in Atlanta. V.V. delivered
the keynote, "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism." I remember
it vividly.
99. My dad sent D. an email the other day to wish her well with student
teaching. He reminded her that my mom was an early childhood teacher, and
he had this to say: "For her, teaching was play." I could elaborate
a lengthy, complicated teaching philosophy, but I won’t do that here, since
I’m at the end of the list. I really like that nugget, not just for the
ways it reflects my mom’s approach to teaching or D.’s, but my own, too.

100. In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.

Not Just Any Old Community College

In my email, I just got an invite to a local poetry slam organized by a
colleague in Social Work. With the invitation, he included a poem from one
of the orators at a recent KC slam, Taylor
Mali
. Rarely am I an aloud-laugher, especially when it’s just me and
the computer. But this! Advanced warning: it’s bit raw. Funny raw, I
think. The
The Impotence of Proofreading
.

Smart, Smart Paper

Sat in a meeting with Xerox reps this morning. We’re charging toward
the "paperless university." As I understand the sales pitch
(which has already been accepted…we’re in the planning stages), the
institution will save lots of money by transforming its documents into TIFF
images which can be over-layered with add-ons to replicate paper
documents. That’s the promise, anyway. In the meeting, I learned
that I’m a database nut; information, IMHO, is most useful when it’s most malleable,
when it can be sorted and grouped, arranged and randomized apart from paper or a static image. I’m talking about institutional data now, lists of names and
associated details, mostly. But the meeting wasn’t about that. It was set
up to inform Xerox about "workflow" in our department.

Postman tells us that one of the active agents in a technopoly is bureaucracy
(the others are experts and technical machinery, following his taxonomy).
The data-gathering form is one of the sublets of the bureaucracy; bureaucracy
is, like a rubber ball (my metaphor, not Postman’s), ever-redirecting between
two inevitable forces in a technologized culture–information glut and efficiency models. Many advanced data management technologies are in place to assist with the problem of information retrieval, tracking, analysis and storage. But I think there’s a cultural lag forming; actually, it’s been long forming–most of my life,
probably. Or longer. The lag, simply put, looks like a wedge between
the capabilities of the technology to aid information processing in a bureaucratic system and the bureaucrats themselves, many who don’t have time, inclination or interest in their appointment-littered work-lives to keep up with the technology, which is rabbitting along at a rapid pace. Enter Xerox.

The solution Xerox promises, given these conditions, is a stopgap, a way of
fending off the technopolistic forces from crushing institutional functioning
under the weight of too much information (too much to process, to understand, to
read, to apply, and so on). It’s a patch, sold on the promise of greater
efficiency, but–at least today–the aim wasn’t revisiting the value of the
information. The stopgap appeals to the paper-loving bureaucrat who often
asks for more information than is really ever needed–a kind of insurance of
excess. I don’t want to sound unaffectionate when I say bureaucrat.
The name bears certain negative connotations, but I’m using it here as Postman
does to refer to one of the active agents in a technopoly. Back to
the meeting. Rather than interrogating the value of information,
the focus was on ease of flow (conduction) and ease of access to old records
(storage). And these are legitimate problems for the administrator whose
desk is littered with papers. I spent the meeting wondering whether we’ll
have more critical, discerning relationships with institutional data any time
soon or whether, as Postman posits, we’ll continue to watch information excess
encroach on our lives at the expense of cultural orientations, social
interactions, rational agency in decision-making (rather than following the lead
of data), and humanism. Those aren’t the only two possibilities by any
means. But they are patterns suggested by Postman, and, after reading
about them, I’m seeing how information glut and efficiency models are reconditioning the student services side of higher ed–at one institution. After a half hour, I figured I’d take a few notes (so as to have some information of my very own). Copy was the most-used word (32 times in one hour and 15
minutes)–slightly ahead of form and file, and well ahead of information.

Leaving Fingerprints on the Glass

I’ve been w|o/a|ndering through a couple of software experiments. Eyes
are fogging up from staring at the glow-box too intently. First, I was
playing around with Scribe,
hot off download. At the basement-bottom price of *free* it beats the heck
out of Endnote in cost
comparison. I haven’t used Scribe for longer than about 30 minutes, but it
seems a bit clunky (okay, so it’s probably me who’s clunky…could
be). I’ve read the rave reviews of Endnote, and I can get a student
version for 99 bucks at journeyed.com–except
that I’m not formally, officially a student right now. The full version
costs a bit more for non-students, and maybe it’s worth it. Who
knows? Trying to plan ahead, brush up with software built to support
regimens of reading, note-taking, writing. I’ll download the trial version of
Endnote later this week or next, give it a whirl.

Since Mike
mentioned it a few days ago, I’ve been intent on looking into what it means to
syndicate a site, to channel its content into a single herd-gate. I’ve
also been playing around with different RSS feed-readers, exploring the
difference between synchronized, pooled entries and the method I’ve been using
to date, whereby I jump from site to site by following links. It’s too early to
tell which approach I prefer, but they strike me as considerably distinct
processes. After I messed around with Pluck, a browser-side
feed-reader, and Feedster, a server-side feed-reader, I was impressed by the
convenience of gathering and sorting entries. Haven’t decided whether I’ll stick
to the feed method. It doesn’t accommodate some of the sites I follow with
interest, such as John’s writing at Jocalo,
Dr. B’s Blog
(which I couldn’t get to syndicate), and the new C&C
Weblog
.

Goodbye Blue Monday

Blogging lite because the load is Monday night heavy. Stampede Green
played yesterday; Blue played tonight at six. They won. That’s one
reason why Blue Monday. Lots more games this week, though. Sheesh. ESPN has a lot of basketball?
Games on Wednesday, Friday and, if the Blue team wins, up to two more on
Saturday. Green on Sunday. It’s all clearer here.
Worked through ten close reading essays since the game ended around 7:00
p.m. Now Leno’s on; Dave too. That means it’s approaching bedtime late, so I
should get started on some other things for tomorrow.

Why else Blue Monday? Punchclawkicking through the usual
battles (no, not really…I’m decorous, polite for the most part…since I don’t
have much club-wielding authority). Is it inevitable that as higher ed
institutions blend corporate, they’ll continue to test the limits of reasonable
working conditions in FY composition and other high-enrolling gateway
courses? I ask because I’m grumpy that once again (for the fourth time in
two years) I’m articulating reasons why adjunct instructors should not be
allowed to teach more than two sections of writing-intensive FY composition in
an accelerated, eight-week format. It’s as much an issue of working
conditions as it is a question of the degree of care and attention I contend are
due to all students. After all, some instructors welcome a cyberspace
crowded with students because online adjuncting pay rates correlate to student
enrollments where I’m at. What’s more, essays come in on six of the eight
Sundays. With two sections, that means 50 essays in one instructor’s email
inbox every Sunday for six weeks: the greatest load I can imagine anyone
handling with due care. Now (learnt today), for the term ahead, one
instructor is assigned to three sections, which, following the formula for
maximum caps in online courses, equates to 75 students in an eight-week
term. That’s why Blue Monday. That’s why Goodbye Blue Monday.

Addendum, 11:07 p.m.: I’m back. I don’t have the gusto to pull apart everything I’ve asserted here. For example, I don’t think FY comp is merely a sequence of “gateway” courses. I do have serious gripes about working conditions as well as quality of teaching and learning when overloads become normal. If I had authority, I wouldn’t necessarily carry a club for inspiring action by brute force. That’s all the revision I can muster right now, but I was feeling mildly inhibited about using EWM for a burst of workplace grouchiness.

Yahoo! It, Yahoo!ing, Yahoo!ed

Today’s New York Times included an article about Yahoo!‘s
pitch to gain ground on the popular search engine Google.
I got snagged on the premise suggested by the article’s title: "The Search Engine That Isn’t a Verb, Yet."
Another way: Yahoo! will scale to new grandeur when its name gets used as a
verb–a term to singularly describe the vast actions of web searching. How
would that sound?

Last week, Yahoo finally replaced Google’s search results with its
home-brewed search engine, which uses a robot, called Slurp, to read Web
pages. Experts say Yahoo’s new search engine is credible and roughly
comparable to Google’s. And more important, Yahoo appears committed to the
sort of engineering work that is needed to improve the quality of Web
searches.

So the tech’s in place. Slurp? Yes, Slurp will suck up what’s
left in the bottom of the search cauldron, yield its dregish results just
fine. But until Yahoo! gets an "I’m feeling lucky!" button,
well, there’s not much to compare. Plus, with a name like Yahoo!, I can’t
imagine using it as a verb any time soon. Maybe it’s the voiceless
consonants. As long as Google’s pair of hard |g|s are soliciting search
queries, that’s where my action will remain. Yahoo! chief exec Terry Semel
regards his company’s latest venture as a bona fide contender in the all-or-nothing clash of the search engines, a kind of Algorithm Smack Down. From
the article: "Mr. Semel, characteristically, declined to talk about Google
or any other competitors, just as he would not discuss battles of media titans.
But that doesn’t mean he is not competitive. ‘I am not one who likes to be
fashionable at the moment,’ he said. ‘I want to win the race.’" I’m
not sure if I’ll know, so will somebody tell me when the race is finished?

Cast A Way

ABC is airing Tom Hanks’ flick where the FedEx executive splashes tragically
into the South Pacific where he idles away several years with a volleyball as
his only friend. It’s a somber film–one I like for simple reasons: water
dripping from the broken pager, the hullabaloo of corporate-career resuscitation
when he returns from the isolated isle, the varied, impractical contents of the
FedEx packages. It’s easy to watch, easier if there weren’t any commercial
interruptions. To keep my media noise at a sufficiently entertaining level
for a Saturday night working on course stuff (D. on her lesson plans, me on some
web things, Ph. in bed at 9:30), I put on Rhythm of the Saints kind of
low. It’s been a wild party ever since.

On the plane Monday night (yeah, that trip, the one still at
the front of my mind), I could see the variously shaped clusters of lights,
towns and cities mapped by their luminance–a kind of social electricity,
grouped filaments graphing the housing patterns of the northeastern American
landscape. I was sitting in 1A, front and left in a row of one (service
space for the attendant on my right, compartments for sodas and pretzel sticks
in tiny bags); it was a Continental puddle-skipper, a low-flying model, which
was nice because I could stare out the window and see more than the topsides of
cloudvapor. Staring, I got thinking about the selfishness of my
aspirations to take up a rigorous, demanding phd program. Like so much sudden
turbulence, I felt a shudder of sadness followed by a wave of dread. I
remembered telling Ph. that turbulence is normal when last we jetted as a
family: to Detroit last Thanksgiving. And so it is.

To distract myself from a melancholy-mood hiccup, I pulled out the courtesy
magazines. Sky Mall. Evacuation card. Oh, and what’ve
we here? Technology
Review
(note: crap link–all for subscribers–cha-ching.). I
started on the article called "10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change
the World." Fair enough. I leafed through the profiles. The one
that interested me most (no. 6?) was about bio-programming–using computer
programming techniques to condition cell behavior. I guess it takes only a
few chemical impulses and RNA encoding to get cells to form cell communities
able to aid the normal functioning of the human organism. The short
profile made all of this sound cyborg-ish, like there are fewer degrees of
separation between humans and computers than there’ve ever been before,
especially now that the human genome has been mapped and most cellular behavior
can be neatly coded. Soon we’ll have comparative genome assessments that
will inform us about our predilections toward all kinds of things, and not long
after that, we might be able to affect those probabilities (er,
certainties?). I don’t know a whole lot about how all of this comes
together, but I am intrigued by the way cell behavior patterns are discussed
like human behavior patterns. In fact, the descriptions of programmed
cell communities
and, elsewhere, synthetic
gene networks (PDF)
bear a surprisingly clear reverberation to emerging
conversations about weblogs as social network construction (are weblogs programming
humans into discrete, selectively knowing/performing/associative groups?).
Timeout. I’m just wondering about all of this, watching what’s taking
shape at Network(ed)
Rhetorics
, and trying to play through some of it here. No conclusions
tonight. Mad TV is on. In case that stinks, SNL is on, too.