Waters of Life
http://vimeo.com/338135
is a documentary about Watsu, water shiatsu, which originated at Harbin ...
The Watsu subject at World University and School ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Watsu_-_water_shiatsu ... is open and editable.
Will virtual Harbin be a first classroom / learning pools for virtual Watsu teaching and learning, as well as first classrooms for World University and School?
How to explore watsu ethnographically in virtual worlds and with avatars, scripts and even robots (saw an interesting presentation at Stanford of robots in water)?
Here's a beginning: “The Making of Virtual Harbin as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/manatee-baby-waters-of-life-documentary.html - November 30, 2010)
To a global, virtual, free, open, {future degree- & credit-granting}, multilingual University & School for the developing world and everyone, as well as loving bliss ~ scottmacleod.com
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Valley & Half Dome: Neither an objective nor a totalizing understanding of actual and virtual Harbins do I, as avatar-ethnographer, have
Harbin ethnography:
... The avatar-ethnographer studying virtual Harbin's counterculture, created by avatars who are emergently making it out of prims, and through conversation and communication, engages anthropological method, as social science, in new, virtual ways, as representations.
Neither an objective nor a totalizing understanding of actual and virtual Harbins, do I as avatar-ethnographer have, and my goals in developing methods to study actual and virtual Harbin, ethnographically, do not include these goals or aims. The particular kinds of knowledge of Harbin that an ethnographer, a scientist, or a Harbin resident or visitor might have tend to be here based on experience, readings, learnings, conversations, intimacies and other kinds of reaching understanding at Harbin. Although, other researchers may be able to develop, for example, objective social psychology experiments at Harbin (e.g. Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. 1973a & b), or measure well-being and affective style vis-a-vis neural substrates and biobehavioural correlates using neural hats, for example (Davidson 2004 - approaches to study Buddhist meditators), which scientific methods and rigor I admire, my goals as researcher are ethnographic, and I see these good examples of social- and neuro-science experimentalism, with objective results, as also partial, given my interest in the culture as a whole at these Harbins. At Harbin, then, because my foci are Harbins' pools' and hippy culture, in situated (e.g. in the pools and in its New Age aspects), and partial ways, I return to ethnography, and, in virtual Harbin, to avatar-ethnography, as method. I'm interested in the ways Harbin's history - for example, the 1970s at Harbin - inform contemporary Harbin, but there aren't that many resources, and no one is talking, or possibly remembers. In 'knowing about' Harbin, with an interest in generating a conversation about the counterculture there, I engage the world wide web, knowledge-wise, which interactively brings Harbin into further conversation with many new processes and temporalities, as a kind of knowledge generation. See these Harbin Youtube videos, for example: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hemiphractus-fasciatus-harbin-hot.html - November 28, 2010 :) . In the process, my network of Harbin friends who also 'know about' Harbin may grow, and virtual Harbin may also become a locus where many Harbinites may generate both the 'Harbin experience' with virtual Watsu, as well as be-ins, turning-ons, tuning-ins, and soakings-in-the-pools, that will then articulate with actual on-the-ground Harbin in generative-for-knowledge-and-understanding-ways. But objectivity and totalizing knowledge about Harbin this is not. Instead, further communicative, connecting and soaking 'practices' grow, for example, as actual and virtual Harbins' 'cultures' develop through time, in its ever present now-now, coming into conversation with contemporary ethnographic practices. Back to the actual pools.
Participant observation, in actual and virtual worlds, and warm pools, as method, is edifying, successfully bridges their differences, and can be richly informative as a form of knowledge-production; visiting Harbin is also very enjoyable. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/valley-half-dome-neither-objective-nor.html - November 30, 2010)
... The avatar-ethnographer studying virtual Harbin's counterculture, created by avatars who are emergently making it out of prims, and through conversation and communication, engages anthropological method, as social science, in new, virtual ways, as representations.
Neither an objective nor a totalizing understanding of actual and virtual Harbins, do I as avatar-ethnographer have, and my goals in developing methods to study actual and virtual Harbin, ethnographically, do not include these goals or aims. The particular kinds of knowledge of Harbin that an ethnographer, a scientist, or a Harbin resident or visitor might have tend to be here based on experience, readings, learnings, conversations, intimacies and other kinds of reaching understanding at Harbin. Although, other researchers may be able to develop, for example, objective social psychology experiments at Harbin (e.g. Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. 1973a & b), or measure well-being and affective style vis-a-vis neural substrates and biobehavioural correlates using neural hats, for example (Davidson 2004 - approaches to study Buddhist meditators), which scientific methods and rigor I admire, my goals as researcher are ethnographic, and I see these good examples of social- and neuro-science experimentalism, with objective results, as also partial, given my interest in the culture as a whole at these Harbins. At Harbin, then, because my foci are Harbins' pools' and hippy culture, in situated (e.g. in the pools and in its New Age aspects), and partial ways, I return to ethnography, and, in virtual Harbin, to avatar-ethnography, as method. I'm interested in the ways Harbin's history - for example, the 1970s at Harbin - inform contemporary Harbin, but there aren't that many resources, and no one is talking, or possibly remembers. In 'knowing about' Harbin, with an interest in generating a conversation about the counterculture there, I engage the world wide web, knowledge-wise, which interactively brings Harbin into further conversation with many new processes and temporalities, as a kind of knowledge generation. See these Harbin Youtube videos, for example: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hemiphractus-fasciatus-harbin-hot.html - November 28, 2010 :) . In the process, my network of Harbin friends who also 'know about' Harbin may grow, and virtual Harbin may also become a locus where many Harbinites may generate both the 'Harbin experience' with virtual Watsu, as well as be-ins, turning-ons, tuning-ins, and soakings-in-the-pools, that will then articulate with actual on-the-ground Harbin in generative-for-knowledge-and-understanding-ways. But objectivity and totalizing knowledge about Harbin this is not. Instead, further communicative, connecting and soaking 'practices' grow, for example, as actual and virtual Harbins' 'cultures' develop through time, in its ever present now-now, coming into conversation with contemporary ethnographic practices. Back to the actual pools.
Participant observation, in actual and virtual worlds, and warm pools, as method, is edifying, successfully bridges their differences, and can be richly informative as a form of knowledge-production; visiting Harbin is also very enjoyable. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/valley-half-dome-neither-objective-nor.html - November 30, 2010)
Day Light Fisher: Harvard Talk by Mica Pollock on education and information technologies, particularly for ethnically diverse Somerville, MA
OneVillage Approach to education:
Harvard Talk by Mica Pollock on education which engages information technologies, particularly for ethnically diverse (4 main languages) Somerville, MA, adjacent to Cambridge, MA, where Harvard and MIT are located.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2010/11/pollock
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/11/pollock
And here's the transcript from the back chat of people attending this talk online, and group chatting about it while it was happening:
Known Networks ChatZilla error Connected Networks
URL irc://foo/bar Not Connected Lag
URL irc://freenode/berkman Mode +cnst Users 8, 0@, 0%, 0+
Topic Welcome to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society IRC Channel
URL irc://foo/bar Connected via
Connected to
File Progress
#berkman
[INFO] Channel view for “#berkman” opened.
=== 4 unknown connection(s)
=-= User mode for RedLotus is now +i
-->| YOU (RedLotus) have joined #berkman
=-= Topic for #berkman is “Welcome to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society IRC Channel”
=-= Topic for #berkman was set by IRC^President on September 10, 2009 3:35:11 AM
=== scottmacleod.com Erroneous Nickname
=-= YOU are now known as scottmacleod
-->| samdiener (~chatzilla@207-172-130-117.c3-0.arl-ubr1.sbo-arl.ma.cable.rcn.com) has joined #berkman
hello folks
I like this introduction. High expectations require high support.
And in order to confront discrimination and oppression of all kinds, I agree we need to mobilize all of us to see, recognize, and ally with each other against inequality and abuse.
Anybody else out there?
Agreed, and I'm glad she's speaking at this Berkman Lunch because of the networks that emerge here ...
And her working locally ... this chatzilla can be a little quiet, in my experience ... let's develop a robust back chat at these lunches :)
Thanks, Scott. This is my first time.
I wonder, when she's talking about the spreadsheet, about who gets to see the info regarding privacy concerns. Who decides? Does the student?
-->| dandennis (~media@140.247.218.91) has joined #berkman
beyond teachers ... ?
Yes, more info beyond number, especially self-reports on how they're feeling and how they're doing.
If we're bringing in tutors, social workers, etc., concerns about confidentiality must be difficult to overcome.
I'm interested in questions of culture or milieu informing learning ... Japan's learning milieu is different from Finland's (which scores highly on international scales) is different from Americans ... information technologies can generate culture and milieu, but communities themselves are the cultures these information technologies engage ...
hello Dan. Or is it Dennis?
yes
hello Sam
Welcome, Dan
thank you Scott!
re: culture. My understanding is that a key component of high-learning student cultures are student cultures in which students are helping and challenging each other to learn via study groups, etc.
dashboard
texting support team
Eportfolio
School-level communication toolkit
citywide
computer infrastructure ...
peers and friends influence learning - agreed - but the schools, cultures, and societies themselves do, as well
These study-groups, for example, have been highly correlated with high achieving asian-american students.
-->| r2wj (~Kevin@c-98-217-64-168.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) has joined #berkman
Ah, she just answered my question regarding who is on the texting support team. She said, "of student's choice."
but I would say Asian Americans (UC Berkeley has a lot of Asian Americans these days) have a culture which is work oriented ... culture again ...
Scott, there's a selection bias there.
work oriented around the 'structure' of the class's expectations ...
Welcome, r2wj
hello scottmacleod
-->| arkadyan_ (~arkadyan@dhcp-147-162.harvard.edu) has joined #berkman
Banks and others have looked at stigmatized groups and shown how even groups stigmatized in Japan and therefore had low academic achievement there, when are put in a different context with different expectations and social support as immigrants in the US, become high achieving, on average, in the US.
Welcome, arkadyan
Hello Kevin and arkadyan
yea!
I thought she said "open source" but is googlevoice open source?
it appears
that she does not know what she's talking about
I would say yes, sam
How so, r2wj?
|<-- arkadyan has left freenode (Ping timeout: 240 seconds)
=-= arkadyan_ is now known as arkadyan
gvoice is proprietary
It sounds like she does know what she's talking about in terms of providing support to all students, maybe not in terms of open source.
that's fair
I'm glad she's raising the privacy and stigmatizing issues.
If 'Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials' (Wikipedia) then GoogleVoice isn't
but it is 'free,' and does promote free communication, and Google would probably be open to communicating about how to improve it as a kind of open source technology
And do students add other students to their support team, or is this only a one student - multiple adult team?
<--| arkadyan has left #berkman
I'm confused about what she said regarding IEP teams. In the schools I've worked in, IEP team members meet with each other. I'm not sure who by law isn't allowed to communicate.
I'm glad she's offering pragmatic information technologies to Somerville students ... and teachers are often the bottle necks because they don't know these technologies that well ... but kids are more facile with IT ...
I'm glad she's addressing the problem of info-glut. It can be difficult for teachers to get too much info as well as too little.
I hope World University & School - like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University will make these resources available ... and in all 3000-8000 languages - including the 4 Somerville languages
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Languages
That looks interesting, Scott.
The process of co-creation - sounds central and crucial.
A culture of learning, vis-a-vis Finland - for Somerville residents of all 4 languages?
Code for America at http://codeforamerica.org/ ?
Looks interesting, Sam ... I'll look to add this to http://www.webnographers.org/index.php?title=Papers - a wiki bibliography for virtual ethnography .. with education resources, too.
Mica ... how to teach teachers about information technology most effectively?
And who teaches them?
Blogging while doing, this might seem to help the process of participant observation described by Burawoy in his co-edited book, Ethnography Unbound
How could students teach teachers about information technologies for education?
I like that question, Scott, because I think we learn best when we see ourselves as students AND teachers.
I'll look to add this to http://www.webnographers.org/index.php?title=Books
A teacher's texting team for learning about information technologies ...
seth looks so handsome and beardy
A wiki textbook for Understanding and Improving a Communication Ecosystem in Education ?
I appreciate that she's sharing a very real example of the challenges of texting re emotional support. How are we going to provide real emotional support via text.
:)
How can make assistance empowering?
styles of communication ... which becomes complicated in diverse Somerville
A key statistic regarding dropout rate is that students who say they know at least one adult who cares about them in the school are much less likely to drop out. I could see this as helping with that.
kids and adults connecting in the context of school ... in a variety of ways
including with digital devices, etc.
around ideas and learning reading, writing and arithmetic, enjoyably?
Do all Somerville high school students have cell phones?
Can someone ask Mica that?
Are there ways to get cell phones to those who don't, for pedagogical purposes?
(monies)
Good ? re if already high achieving students might take to this model more readily
How to avoid replicating and reinforcing inequality. I like what she said about building the pilot to address that so that the roll out focuses on students who need it more first.
One group of students who commonly gets ignored (except by military recruiters) are the C-, C, C+, B- students who don't get into trouble.
history ... Hmmm ... Charlie Nesson's Jamaica project (on World University and School's Languages' page) is perhaps an example not close to home in Somerville ...
They don't get in trouble so aren't going to the assistant principals. They're not going to the guidance counselors for college help, typically, and often slip through the cracks.
What about the Jamaica Project?
AT the Ascot High School there, they're developing an approach to learning which integrates information technologies, in conjunction with community support ...
ah, cool.
... a kind of model to come into conversation with this OneVillage Ecology approach?
How to support tired teachers?
more teachers?
Regarding teachers with no time, I think the issue is particularly real depending on teachers' student loads. If the student load is reduced by making classes longer per day, etc., I think this would work better.
the distributed teacher network approach ... smaller classrooms... more connections around learning between teachers, adults and kids
and a U.S. and Massachusetts culture of learning which gives more monies to educators?
Thanks Mica, and Thanks, Scott.
|<-- dandennis has left freenode (Quit: dandennis)
Thanks, Mica!
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/day-light-fisher-harvard-talk-by-mica.html - November 30, 2010)
Harvard Talk by Mica Pollock on education which engages information technologies, particularly for ethnically diverse (4 main languages) Somerville, MA, adjacent to Cambridge, MA, where Harvard and MIT are located.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2010/11/pollock
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/11/pollock
And here's the transcript from the back chat of people attending this talk online, and group chatting about it while it was happening:
Known Networks ChatZilla error Connected Networks
URL irc://foo/bar Not Connected Lag
URL irc://freenode/berkman Mode +cnst Users 8, 0@, 0%, 0+
Topic Welcome to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society IRC Channel
URL irc://foo/bar Connected via
File Progress
#berkman
[INFO] Channel view for “#berkman” opened.
=== 4 unknown connection(s)
=-= User mode for RedLotus is now +i
-->| YOU (RedLotus) have joined #berkman
=-= Topic for #berkman is “Welcome to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society IRC Channel”
=-= Topic for #berkman was set by IRC^President on September 10, 2009 3:35:11 AM
=== scottmacleod.com Erroneous Nickname
=-= YOU are now known as scottmacleod
-->| samdiener (~chatzilla@207-172-130-117.c3-0.arl-ubr1.sbo-arl.ma.cable.rcn.com) has joined #berkman
-->| dandennis (~media@140.247.218.91) has joined #berkman
-->| r2wj (~Kevin@c-98-217-64-168.hsd1.ma.comcast.net) has joined #berkman
-->| arkadyan_ (~arkadyan@dhcp-147-162.harvard.edu) has joined #berkman
|<-- arkadyan has left freenode (Ping timeout: 240 seconds)
=-= arkadyan_ is now known as arkadyan
<--| arkadyan has left #berkman
|<-- dandennis has left freenode (Quit: dandennis)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/day-light-fisher-harvard-talk-by-mica.html - November 30, 2010)
Binary Star: STAR TREK-Scotty Hacks A MacPlus (30 second video), Starship Enterprise was an amazingly powerful technology
STAR TREK - Scotty Hacks The Apple "Macintosh" Computer.
Star Trek, Scotty ... Kirk ...
Friend:
I had forgotten that was a mac - I'm surprised he could hack it as the Enterprise runs on DOS
Scott:
The Starship Enterprise was an amazingly powerful technology and voice-commanded computer ...
and the Mac which Scotty hacks here puts Star Trek's science fiction vision in perspective :)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/12/binary-star-star-trek-scotty-hacks.html - November 30, 2010)
Star Trek, Scotty ... Kirk ...
Friend:
I had forgotten that was a mac - I'm surprised he could hack it as the Enterprise runs on DOS
Scott:
The Starship Enterprise was an amazingly powerful technology and voice-commanded computer ...
and the Mac which Scotty hacks here puts Star Trek's science fiction vision in perspective :)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/12/binary-star-star-trek-scotty-hacks.html - November 30, 2010)
Monday, November 29, 2010
Galactic Star - Rho Ophiuchi: Google's CEO Eric Schmidt on the Nexus, and Google thinking today
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt on the Nexus, and Google thinking today:
contemporary information technological thinking ...
A phone which also can be used for secure transactions, as a complement to credit cards ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/galactic-star-rho-ophiuchi-googles-ceo.html - November 29, 2010)
contemporary information technological thinking ...
A phone which also can be used for secure transactions, as a complement to credit cards ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/galactic-star-rho-ophiuchi-googles-ceo.html - November 29, 2010)
Seljalandsfoss Waterfall: Harvard Educational Reform panel, Need a compelling story per Bush's observation here? World University and School
Harvard Educational Reform panel ... http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/like-minded/ ...
Need a compelling story per Bush's observation here? ... http://worlduniversty.wikia.com/ ...
with its great INPUTS for students ... i.e. teaching & leaning resources for Kids' bodyminds to learn from
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/seljalandsfoss-waterfall-harvard.html - November 29, 2010)
Need a compelling story per Bush's observation here? ... http://worlduniversty.wikia.com/ ...
with its great INPUTS for students ... i.e. teaching & leaning resources for Kids' bodyminds to learn from
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/seljalandsfoss-waterfall-harvard.html - November 29, 2010)
Hylomantis lemur: Primary experience as an avatar-ethnographer studying virtual worlds has been as a student & instructor, Virtual, Representations
Harbin ethnography:
... In a sense, this book is a scientific anthropology, and envisioning – so, a science fiction (e.g. like Ursula Le Guin's “Always Coming Home” 1985) - which writes virtual ethnography, now in multimedia and virtual worlds.
In a sense my primary experience as an avatar-ethnographer studying and thinking about virtual worlds like Second Life and Open Simulator, with an interest in “The Making of Virtual Harbin as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE), has been as a student and instructor on Harvard's virtual island in Second Life, since 2006, and representationally. Here, I've absorbed my knowledge, ethnographically, of Second Life, in conversation and through experience by visiting virtual islands and sims, building with prims, and teaching a course about the information technology revolution vis-a-vis Professor Manuel Castells' work on the Network Society. So, my knowledge of the 'virtual' (e.g. “not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so” - Apple dictionary) here, vis-a-vis the virtual worlds of Second Life and Open Simulator, is shaped by my bodymind thinking, and in conversation with others – my biological and symbolic thinking software per the definition above - about what I'm learning, and then writing about it, which is a material or visible manifestation of thinking as software. Virtual, here in this book, then includes primate bodyminds thinking and engaging interactive representations in modernities. So, for example, I've visited holodecks in Second Life with realistic photo landscape montages that make my avatar appear cartoon-esque. I've floated in hot air balloons out of valleys, and over mountains, and to the sea, in the Gardens of Bliss, a 'build' which has been since taken down. I've visited islands for instruction in virtual building with prims (primitives). In addition to participating in the free, open, Harvard course “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion” (web site: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/teaching/courses/2006/fall/cyberone) in 2006 on Harvard's Berkman Island (for which some Harvard Law students received credit), as an at-large participant, I've participated as a juror in a mock Burning Man trial (2007?) for a Harvard Law class (transcript: http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/w/page/17175578/FrontPage) for pedagogical purposes, where the teacher of the CyberOne course in 2006, Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, played the role of the judge. And I've participated in conversations imagining Second Life as a separate nation state, with its own laws and tax advantages, wondering in what ways it could be tax havens, Utopias or universities. And I've attended talks where the U.S. government has looked at questions of taxing the Second Life economy. And I've not only taught on a number of virtual islands, but also thought of virtual islands in Second Life and Open Simulator as great, future classrooms for World University and School (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com – like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware) in all 3,000-8,000 languages, and as medical and law schools. In a related vein, see this hospital in Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Imperial%20College%20London/150/86/27 AND http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Medical_School_and_Hospital. In addition, I've conceived of ways in which virtual worlds such as Second Life and Open Simulator, like the virtual world of Croquet, could become chemistry or physics' labs (see San Francisco's Exploratorium Second Life exhibits: http://www.splo.org/SLCC2009.htm). I've also thought of how such virtual worlds could be the basis for a topographically accurate earth where an avatar could visit virtually UNESCO World Heritage sites, all the museums in the world, all of the oceans, the stars, the universe and the cosmos, as well as become the site for rigorous, scientific experiments, and why this doesn't already exist in great measure. In many ways, financial resources have been the limiting factor for developing these thus far. As my own avatar-ethnographer informant, all of these contribute reflexively and subjectively to my understanding of the 'virtual,' as well as to how I understand virtual worlds ethnographically. Objectivity, vis-a-vis human interaction, ethnographically, and the milieu, context, or fabric of life, such as what occurs at actual Harbin, and now in virtual Harbin, is mediated here, by representations, multimedia virtual worlds, digital technologies, as well as language, rendering impartiality problematic. The avatar-ethnographer studying virtual Harbin's counterculture, created by avatars who are emergently making it out of prims, and through conversation and communication, engages anthropological method, as social science, in new, virtual ways, as representations.
Neither an objective nor a totalizing understanding of actual and virtual Harbins, do I as avatar-ethnographer have, and my goals in developing methods to study actual and virtual Harbin, ethnographically, do not include these goals or aims. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hylomantis-lemur-primary-experience-as.html - November 29, 2010)
... In a sense, this book is a scientific anthropology, and envisioning – so, a science fiction (e.g. like Ursula Le Guin's “Always Coming Home” 1985) - which writes virtual ethnography, now in multimedia and virtual worlds.
In a sense my primary experience as an avatar-ethnographer studying and thinking about virtual worlds like Second Life and Open Simulator, with an interest in “The Making of Virtual Harbin as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE), has been as a student and instructor on Harvard's virtual island in Second Life, since 2006, and representationally. Here, I've absorbed my knowledge, ethnographically, of Second Life, in conversation and through experience by visiting virtual islands and sims, building with prims, and teaching a course about the information technology revolution vis-a-vis Professor Manuel Castells' work on the Network Society. So, my knowledge of the 'virtual' (e.g. “not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so” - Apple dictionary) here, vis-a-vis the virtual worlds of Second Life and Open Simulator, is shaped by my bodymind thinking, and in conversation with others – my biological and symbolic thinking software per the definition above - about what I'm learning, and then writing about it, which is a material or visible manifestation of thinking as software. Virtual, here in this book, then includes primate bodyminds thinking and engaging interactive representations in modernities. So, for example, I've visited holodecks in Second Life with realistic photo landscape montages that make my avatar appear cartoon-esque. I've floated in hot air balloons out of valleys, and over mountains, and to the sea, in the Gardens of Bliss, a 'build' which has been since taken down. I've visited islands for instruction in virtual building with prims (primitives). In addition to participating in the free, open, Harvard course “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion” (web site: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/teaching/courses/2006/fall/cyberone) in 2006 on Harvard's Berkman Island (for which some Harvard Law students received credit), as an at-large participant, I've participated as a juror in a mock Burning Man trial (2007?) for a Harvard Law class (transcript: http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/w/page/17175578/FrontPage) for pedagogical purposes, where the teacher of the CyberOne course in 2006, Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, played the role of the judge. And I've participated in conversations imagining Second Life as a separate nation state, with its own laws and tax advantages, wondering in what ways it could be tax havens, Utopias or universities. And I've attended talks where the U.S. government has looked at questions of taxing the Second Life economy. And I've not only taught on a number of virtual islands, but also thought of virtual islands in Second Life and Open Simulator as great, future classrooms for World University and School (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com – like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware) in all 3,000-8,000 languages, and as medical and law schools. In a related vein, see this hospital in Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Imperial%20College%20London/150/86/27 AND http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Medical_School_and_Hospital. In addition, I've conceived of ways in which virtual worlds such as Second Life and Open Simulator, like the virtual world of Croquet, could become chemistry or physics' labs (see San Francisco's Exploratorium Second Life exhibits: http://www.splo.org/SLCC2009.htm). I've also thought of how such virtual worlds could be the basis for a topographically accurate earth where an avatar could visit virtually UNESCO World Heritage sites, all the museums in the world, all of the oceans, the stars, the universe and the cosmos, as well as become the site for rigorous, scientific experiments, and why this doesn't already exist in great measure. In many ways, financial resources have been the limiting factor for developing these thus far. As my own avatar-ethnographer informant, all of these contribute reflexively and subjectively to my understanding of the 'virtual,' as well as to how I understand virtual worlds ethnographically. Objectivity, vis-a-vis human interaction, ethnographically, and the milieu, context, or fabric of life, such as what occurs at actual Harbin, and now in virtual Harbin, is mediated here, by representations, multimedia virtual worlds, digital technologies, as well as language, rendering impartiality problematic. The avatar-ethnographer studying virtual Harbin's counterculture, created by avatars who are emergently making it out of prims, and through conversation and communication, engages anthropological method, as social science, in new, virtual ways, as representations.
Neither an objective nor a totalizing understanding of actual and virtual Harbins, do I as avatar-ethnographer have, and my goals in developing methods to study actual and virtual Harbin, ethnographically, do not include these goals or aims. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hylomantis-lemur-primary-experience-as.html - November 29, 2010)
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Hemiphractus fasciatus: Harbin Hot Springs' videos online
Harbin Hot Springs' videos online I found online recently:
"Maharaji's Dream" Harbin Hot Springs Jeff Palmer Memorial Concert 2008
(This video no longer exists on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj1aYhJLqlY
(There was beautiful dancing here).
*
Waters of Life (Watsu documentary where Harold Dull talks about Watsu's origins at Harbin and much more)
http://vimeo.com/338135
*
"Groove Time" Harbin Hot Springs Jeff Palmer Memorial Concert 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO1_Ef1NTOg
*
"Encore" Harbin Hot Springs Jeffrey Palmer Memorial Concert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y-Qb1v94Fg
*
Hoosh in Harbin Hot Springs, CA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibQQubwU7vs
Part 2 - Trip to Harbin Hot Spring Park, Napa Valley, CA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EyCF7LxdJY
Part 3 - Going to Harbin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ0ls6Qx1vg
Part - 5 Hiking at Harbin....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIwsSJVdSFs
*
Harbin Hot Springs (Poem)
Randolph, Bob (tecoloteblanco). 1989. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziB2mx8NPOg Harbin Hot Springs]. youtube.com
*
Torrent - Harbin Hot Springs- California
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alYNIu2VEqE
*
Watsu - Wake Me Up Yin Slower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dg4wzqeKlU
*
Watsu - Wake Me Up Yang Faster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stTVjKvmV_8
*
Crystal blankets, Light & Sound Technolgy with Sacred Geometry @ NATIVE SYNERGY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OOwj1okQ4A
*
Watsu Center Retrospective Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbTH2cKitK4
Watsu Center Retrospective Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLa2175GR3k
Watsu Center Retrospective Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fihxaAmIUEY
*
Hula Hooping at Harbin - AquaLammas Party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnB5O2SWxi4
*
Harbin Wedding Mellissa & Richard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSG5NtpAafg&NR=1
*
JOY, Laughter Creativity & Play - A Laughter Yoga Workshop (at Harbin Hot Springs 2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhw8kWm_BmQ
*
The Workshop (2007) Part 1 of 14 full film movie online (filmed at Harbin
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xccyc2_the-workshop-2007-part-1-of-14-full_shortfilms
*
Do Open Relationships Work? "The Workshop" debuts at Tribeca (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeZLJg0kPmM
Do Open Relationships Work? "The Workshop" debuts at Tribeca
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeZLJg0kPmM
*
Remembering Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3hLKWhXXKs
Paul Lowe clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7TEgX3TeV4
Paul Lowe on living in the moment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e07mN7NrcWE
Paul Lowe on monogamy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCqcF98Af5I
*
Stan Dale founded the Human Awareness Institute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHz-U-4KZnE
Stan invites you to be love 24 hours a day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAGNeWFyxY
*
Tantric Yoga for Lovers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXtpuEJMnEk
*
Tantra Workshops with Steve & Lokita Carter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9IxTYtEFz4
The Breath of Tantric Love-Steve Carter Part3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HPjLLvhGEA
*
TES AND THE GOD SQUAD (Polyamory at Harbin Hot Springs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MG-ynwOWAo
TES AND THE GOD SQUAD (PART 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp_-HboHSIE
*
How to Tie the Harbin Knot by TIAT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPHy96BYXFc
*
Heather Salmon: Changes on Mother Earth
http://vimeo.com/12128074
*
Watsu - Playful Water Therapy Session with Art Photography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHjm1frwpqo
MATERNITY WATSU FOR EXPECTANT MOTHERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6TzbXbTqjs
water dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNmnXlifxQ
Aqualana® und Watsu - 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZc-T3PmGg
*
shiva shambo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtj_awht-bI
*
Dance Awakening at Harbin Hotsprings -1
http://vimeo.com/4316680
*
watsu week 2007 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9l7-FCLWQA
*
Celebrating Humanity with Marianne Neuwirth (Contact Improv)
(The video was taken by 6 year old Shalene at this year's Memorial Day Contact Improvisation Jam at Harbin Hot Springs. It is of a dance choreographed and performed by Marianne Neuwirth to celebrate humanity. Many of us joyfully accepted her invitation to join her in the celebration. Thank you, Marianne! for embodying our wonder.)
http://vimeo.com/5258458
*
And ...
"The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life & Open Simulator" - by Scott MacLeod in April 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE
(Also accessible here: http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm ).
(Virtual ethnography: I found these in about a two hour search; I was surprised I couldn't find more, especially on youtube.com. All of these videos either happen at Harbin Hot Springs in northern California, or they've inspired the Watsu in Italy, for example).
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hemiphractus-fasciatus-harbin-hot.html - November 28, 2010)
"Maharaji's Dream" Harbin Hot Springs Jeff Palmer Memorial Concert 2008
(This video no longer exists on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj1aYhJLqlY
(There was beautiful dancing here).
*
Waters of Life (Watsu documentary where Harold Dull talks about Watsu's origins at Harbin and much more)
http://vimeo.com/338135
*
"Groove Time" Harbin Hot Springs Jeff Palmer Memorial Concert 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO1_Ef1NTOg
*
"Encore" Harbin Hot Springs Jeffrey Palmer Memorial Concert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y-Qb1v94Fg
*
Hoosh in Harbin Hot Springs, CA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibQQubwU7vs
Part 2 - Trip to Harbin Hot Spring Park, Napa Valley, CA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EyCF7LxdJY
Part 3 - Going to Harbin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ0ls6Qx1vg
Part - 5 Hiking at Harbin....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIwsSJVdSFs
*
Harbin Hot Springs (Poem)
Randolph, Bob (tecoloteblanco). 1989. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziB2mx8NPOg Harbin Hot Springs]. youtube.com
*
Torrent - Harbin Hot Springs- California
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alYNIu2VEqE
*
Watsu - Wake Me Up Yin Slower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dg4wzqeKlU
*
Watsu - Wake Me Up Yang Faster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stTVjKvmV_8
*
Crystal blankets, Light & Sound Technolgy with Sacred Geometry @ NATIVE SYNERGY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OOwj1okQ4A
*
Watsu Center Retrospective Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbTH2cKitK4
Watsu Center Retrospective Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLa2175GR3k
Watsu Center Retrospective Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fihxaAmIUEY
*
Hula Hooping at Harbin - AquaLammas Party
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnB5O2SWxi4
*
Harbin Wedding Mellissa & Richard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSG5NtpAafg&NR=1
*
JOY, Laughter Creativity & Play - A Laughter Yoga Workshop (at Harbin Hot Springs 2008)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhw8kWm_BmQ
*
The Workshop (2007) Part 1 of 14 full film movie online (filmed at Harbin
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xccyc2_the-workshop-2007-part-1-of-14-full_shortfilms
*
Do Open Relationships Work? "The Workshop" debuts at Tribeca (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeZLJg0kPmM
Do Open Relationships Work? "The Workshop" debuts at Tribeca
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeZLJg0kPmM
*
Remembering Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3hLKWhXXKs
Paul Lowe clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7TEgX3TeV4
Paul Lowe on living in the moment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e07mN7NrcWE
Paul Lowe on monogamy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCqcF98Af5I
*
Stan Dale founded the Human Awareness Institute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHz-U-4KZnE
Stan invites you to be love 24 hours a day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpAGNeWFyxY
*
Tantric Yoga for Lovers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXtpuEJMnEk
*
Tantra Workshops with Steve & Lokita Carter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9IxTYtEFz4
The Breath of Tantric Love-Steve Carter Part3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HPjLLvhGEA
*
TES AND THE GOD SQUAD (Polyamory at Harbin Hot Springs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MG-ynwOWAo
TES AND THE GOD SQUAD (PART 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp_-HboHSIE
*
How to Tie the Harbin Knot by TIAT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPHy96BYXFc
*
Heather Salmon: Changes on Mother Earth
http://vimeo.com/12128074
*
Watsu - Playful Water Therapy Session with Art Photography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHjm1frwpqo
MATERNITY WATSU FOR EXPECTANT MOTHERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6TzbXbTqjs
water dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNmnXlifxQ
Aqualana® und Watsu - 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZc-T3PmGg
*
shiva shambo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtj_awht-bI
*
Dance Awakening at Harbin Hotsprings -1
http://vimeo.com/4316680
*
watsu week 2007 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9l7-FCLWQA
*
Celebrating Humanity with Marianne Neuwirth (Contact Improv)
(The video was taken by 6 year old Shalene at this year's Memorial Day Contact Improvisation Jam at Harbin Hot Springs. It is of a dance choreographed and performed by Marianne Neuwirth to celebrate humanity. Many of us joyfully accepted her invitation to join her in the celebration. Thank you, Marianne! for embodying our wonder.)
http://vimeo.com/5258458
*
And ...
"The Making of Virtual Harbin Hot Springs as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life & Open Simulator" - by Scott MacLeod in April 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE
(Also accessible here: http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm ).
(Virtual ethnography: I found these in about a two hour search; I was surprised I couldn't find more, especially on youtube.com. All of these videos either happen at Harbin Hot Springs in northern California, or they've inspired the Watsu in Italy, for example).
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hemiphractus-fasciatus-harbin-hot.html - November 28, 2010)
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Human brain: Music-brainwave devices, Tan Le's 'A headset that reads your brainwaves,' Brainfingers.com * * * Brain Computer Interface https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Brain_Computer_Interface, Brain and Cognitive Sciences https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Brain_and_Cognitive_Sciences * * * "Flower coral: 'Brainfingers: Hands-Free Computer Access Solution,' 'Tan Le: A headset ... "
Music-brainwave devices -
*
FINN PETERS MUSIC OF THE MIND
https://youtu.be/epT16fbf4RM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epT16fbf4RM - which allows users to make music with their minds using a device
*
Tan Le's TED Talk "A headset that reads your brainwaves" -
https://youtu.be/fs2GDSYYCoA
http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html - which moves a digital cube close and far, and without gel
*
Andrew Junker's Brainfingers.com -
https://youtu.be/HgKveoYDmh4
http://www.brainfingers.com/ - picks letters and words from a key board ... have to be deeply relaxed to use this ...
all similarly fascinating, each with different capabilities ...
*
*
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/human-brain-music-brainwave-device-tan.html - November 27, 2010)
*
FINN PETERS MUSIC OF THE MIND
https://youtu.be/epT16fbf4RM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epT16fbf4RM - which allows users to make music with their minds using a device
*
Tan Le's TED Talk "A headset that reads your brainwaves" -
https://youtu.be/fs2GDSYYCoA
http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html - which moves a digital cube close and far, and without gel
*
Andrew Junker's Brainfingers.com -
https://youtu.be/HgKveoYDmh4
http://www.brainfingers.com/ - picks letters and words from a key board ... have to be deeply relaxed to use this ...
all similarly fascinating, each with different capabilities ...
*
Brain Computer Interface
https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Brain_Computer_InterfaceBrain and Cognitive Sciences
https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Brain_and_Cognitive_Sciences*
Flower coral: 'Brainfingers: Hands-Free Computer Access Solution,' 'Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves,' 'Mind Control Device Demonstration - Tan Le,' World University and School's 'Brain Computer Interface,' wiki, subject page, MIT, Linked these 3 videos to my recent poem here, 'Monsieur Nikhil Bannerjee, master raga player, moved me along the way,' Excited about these possibilities for virtual Harbin
https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2013/01/flower-coral-brainfingers-hands-free.html
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/human-brain-music-brainwave-device-tan.html - November 27, 2010)
Friday, November 26, 2010
Leatherback Turtles: Actual & virtual ethnographic study of 'culture' contributes to scientific, knowledge conversations, Science Fiction, too
Harbin ethnography:
... And, in my view, while ethnography does contribute to 'knowledge production about' sociocultural phenomena, which might be considered 'objects' of study or analysis, it also retains scientific approaches to understanding, and knowledge-production-about, the particular and singular, as well.
Not only does the actual and virtual ethnographic study of 'culture,' and here counterculture, contribute to knowledge conversations, scientifically understood (see, too, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy's entry of the philosophy of science, 2005:852), but virtual world building, additionally, “can be crucial … for imagining the kinds of communities that human groups can create with the help of emerging technologies” (Escobar 1994). Methodologically, then, the making and study of virtual Harbin, makes further possible the ethnographic study of both actual and virtual Harbin in new multimedia and digitally-mediated ways, including an examination of the other, of hippies at Harbin, here, counter-culturally. In so doing, this ethnography joins in scientifically-inclined, knowledge-production conversations, especially vis-a-vis the significance of objectivity, anthropologically, while co-generating an emerging-into-the-future '60s-informed, digital, alternative, hot springs' community, for ongoing ethnographic study. In a sense, this book is a scientific anthropology, and envisioning – so, a science fiction (e.g. like Ursula Le Guin's “Always Coming Home” 1985) - which writes virtual ethnography, now in multimedia and virtual worlds.
In a sense my primary experience as an avatar-ethnographer studying and thinking about virtual worlds like Second Life and Open Simulator, with an interest in “The Making of Virtual Harbin as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE), has been as a student and instructor on Harvard's virtual island in Second Life, since 2006, and representationally. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/leatherback-turtles-actual-virtual.html - November 26. 2010)
... And, in my view, while ethnography does contribute to 'knowledge production about' sociocultural phenomena, which might be considered 'objects' of study or analysis, it also retains scientific approaches to understanding, and knowledge-production-about, the particular and singular, as well.
Not only does the actual and virtual ethnographic study of 'culture,' and here counterculture, contribute to knowledge conversations, scientifically understood (see, too, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy's entry of the philosophy of science, 2005:852), but virtual world building, additionally, “can be crucial … for imagining the kinds of communities that human groups can create with the help of emerging technologies” (Escobar 1994). Methodologically, then, the making and study of virtual Harbin, makes further possible the ethnographic study of both actual and virtual Harbin in new multimedia and digitally-mediated ways, including an examination of the other, of hippies at Harbin, here, counter-culturally. In so doing, this ethnography joins in scientifically-inclined, knowledge-production conversations, especially vis-a-vis the significance of objectivity, anthropologically, while co-generating an emerging-into-the-future '60s-informed, digital, alternative, hot springs' community, for ongoing ethnographic study. In a sense, this book is a scientific anthropology, and envisioning – so, a science fiction (e.g. like Ursula Le Guin's “Always Coming Home” 1985) - which writes virtual ethnography, now in multimedia and virtual worlds.
In a sense my primary experience as an avatar-ethnographer studying and thinking about virtual worlds like Second Life and Open Simulator, with an interest in “The Making of Virtual Harbin as Ethnographic Field Site in Second Life and Open Simulator” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhvcHw54GE), has been as a student and instructor on Harvard's virtual island in Second Life, since 2006, and representationally. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/leatherback-turtles-actual-virtual.html - November 26. 2010)
Urial: Please help us improve World Univ & Sch, WUaS is 'As you like it' & a New Paradigm in Teaching & Learning
Please help us improve World University & School -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com.
Know of music instruction on youtube you enjoy?
Any computer programs your kids are learning from (e.g. Google Sketchup)?
Any online college course material, or a video from this, you've found informative?
Add them to WUaS (click 'Edit') or let WUAS know ...
*
WUaS is 'As you like it' ...
there is/are an abundance of teaching & learning resources at World Univ & Sch to which we can add -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ -
and World Univ & Sch is incorporated
& has very beginnings of resources coming in to develop
great focused & fun learn-what-you-like ... conversations.
*
... World Univ & Sch - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/.. Please help us improve WUaS ... Know of any music instruction on youtube you enjoy? Any computer programs your kids are learning from (e.g. Google Sketchup)? Any online, college, course material, or a video from this, you've ...found informative? Add them to WUaS (click 'Edit') or let WUAS know ... like Wikipedia with MIT OCW
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/urial-please-help-us-improve-world-univ.html - November 26, 2010)
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com.
Know of music instruction on youtube you enjoy?
Any computer programs your kids are learning from (e.g. Google Sketchup)?
Any online college course material, or a video from this, you've found informative?
Add them to WUaS (click 'Edit') or let WUAS know ...
*
WUaS is 'As you like it' ...
there is/are an abundance of teaching & learning resources at World Univ & Sch to which we can add -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ -
and World Univ & Sch is incorporated
& has very beginnings of resources coming in to develop
great focused & fun learn-what-you-like ... conversations.
*
... World Univ & Sch - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/.. Please help us improve WUaS ... Know of any music instruction on youtube you enjoy? Any computer programs your kids are learning from (e.g. Google Sketchup)? Any online, college, course material, or a video from this, you've ...found informative? Add them to WUaS (click 'Edit') or let WUAS know ... like Wikipedia with MIT OCW
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/urial-please-help-us-improve-world-univ.html - November 26, 2010)
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Turkeys: Arlo Guthrie/Alice's Restaurant
Arlo Guthrie/Alice's Restaurant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/turkeys-arlo-guthriealices-restaurant.html - November 25, 2010)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7C0QGkiVo
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/turkeys-arlo-guthriealices-restaurant.html - November 25, 2010)
Punjab Urial: Does an important aspect of the concept of culture have to do with what people focus on? Flow
Scott
Does an important aspect of the concept of culture have to do with what people focus on ...
e.g. Hindus in India 500 years focused on farming and Hindu ways of thinking, Gods & Goddesses, and family, social life ...
and people in the modern world significantly focus on the media, and now choice of URL with infinite web site addresses ?
Friend:
I think you left out a word there. How about:
"HOW does ..." a yes or no answer is unworthy of such a question ;).
Scott:
agreed :) ... and, in my readings, anthropology hasn't focused explicitly on this ...
and I'm particularly interested in how the choice aspect of what people focus on works ...
In what ways were individual Hindus 500 years ago, for example, choosing their 'flow' (Csikszentmihalyi) experiences from a cultural fabric of family life, gods & goddesses etc, and how can we, with the internet and family, etc., choose our 'flow' experiences, to lead to rocking out ...
or creating World University ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/punjab-urial-does-important-aspect-of.html - November 25, 2010)
Does an important aspect of the concept of culture have to do with what people focus on ...
e.g. Hindus in India 500 years focused on farming and Hindu ways of thinking, Gods & Goddesses, and family, social life ...
and people in the modern world significantly focus on the media, and now choice of URL with infinite web site addresses ?
Friend:
I think you left out a word there. How about:
"HOW does ..." a yes or no answer is unworthy of such a question ;).
Scott:
agreed :) ... and, in my readings, anthropology hasn't focused explicitly on this ...
and I'm particularly interested in how the choice aspect of what people focus on works ...
In what ways were individual Hindus 500 years ago, for example, choosing their 'flow' (Csikszentmihalyi) experiences from a cultural fabric of family life, gods & goddesses etc, and how can we, with the internet and family, etc., choose our 'flow' experiences, to lead to rocking out ...
or creating World University ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/punjab-urial-does-important-aspect-of.html - November 25, 2010)
Lissamphibia: If culture, like identity, can be “conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations, Objectivity & Science
Harbin ethnography:
... With actual and virtual Harbins, especially with still-rudimentary headsets that can read your 'brain waves,' for example, the articulations and conjunctions expand further, and actual and virtual participant observation, as method, can seek to understand new cultural temporalities and processes.
If culture, like identity, can be “conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject... ” (Clifford, 1988:344), ethnography has a rich tradition of research for studying this, making possible nuanced 'knowledge about' people, and the 'other,' representable, both actually and virtually. And objective study of such interactions, temporalities, emergences. conjunctures and processes is problematic, in a 'hard' science sense. While ethnography itself has multiple trajectories of analysis of the other – e.g. identifying with, by participating with the 'other,' or, observing the 'other' from a 'distanced,' epistemological perspective (Boellstorff 2008:69) – predicated on epistemic assumptions of knowledge-traditions concerning objectivity, ethnography of virtual worlds allows for new forms of conceiving of, and understanding, the 'other,' due to multimedia-informed interactions. Here, for example, anonymous avatars, representing you and I anywhere in the world, and which communicate openly via voice and text chat, and who can build worlds that we want, or envision, are new ethnographic subjects. While, for some researchers (e.g. in Communication Studies?), virtual worlds may hold promise for objective study of sociocultural phenomena, which ethnographers may also study, I haven't come across any studies with experimental rigor that meets a degree of skepticism I find important in 'hard' science; see, for example, the list of books at http://webnographers.org , a wiki bibliography for virtual ethnography, to which you can also add titles. What this actual / virtual Harbin Harbin Hot Springs' ethnography adds to knowledge production, vis-a-vis science, and the study of culture, objectively, is both comparison and generalization (Boellstorff 2008:69), where both Harbins here, novelly for anthropology, are compared, and virtual Harbin becomes a kind of generalization of actual Harbin. And, in my view, while ethnography does contribute to 'knowledge production about' sociocultural phenomena, which might be considered 'objects' of study or analysis, it also retains scientific approaches to understanding, and knowledge-production-about, the particular and singular, as well.
Not only does the actual and virtual ethnographic study of 'culture,' and here counterculture, contribute to knowledge conversations, scientifically understood (see, too, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy's entry of the philosophy of science, 2005:852), but virtual world building, additionally, “can be crucial … for imagining the kinds of communities that human groups can create with the help of emerging technologies” (Escobar 1994). ...
(November 25, 2010)
... With actual and virtual Harbins, especially with still-rudimentary headsets that can read your 'brain waves,' for example, the articulations and conjunctions expand further, and actual and virtual participant observation, as method, can seek to understand new cultural temporalities and processes.
If culture, like identity, can be “conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject... ” (Clifford, 1988:344), ethnography has a rich tradition of research for studying this, making possible nuanced 'knowledge about' people, and the 'other,' representable, both actually and virtually. And objective study of such interactions, temporalities, emergences. conjunctures and processes is problematic, in a 'hard' science sense. While ethnography itself has multiple trajectories of analysis of the other – e.g. identifying with, by participating with the 'other,' or, observing the 'other' from a 'distanced,' epistemological perspective (Boellstorff 2008:69) – predicated on epistemic assumptions of knowledge-traditions concerning objectivity, ethnography of virtual worlds allows for new forms of conceiving of, and understanding, the 'other,' due to multimedia-informed interactions. Here, for example, anonymous avatars, representing you and I anywhere in the world, and which communicate openly via voice and text chat, and who can build worlds that we want, or envision, are new ethnographic subjects. While, for some researchers (e.g. in Communication Studies?), virtual worlds may hold promise for objective study of sociocultural phenomena, which ethnographers may also study, I haven't come across any studies with experimental rigor that meets a degree of skepticism I find important in 'hard' science; see, for example, the list of books at http://webnographers.org , a wiki bibliography for virtual ethnography, to which you can also add titles. What this actual / virtual Harbin Harbin Hot Springs' ethnography adds to knowledge production, vis-a-vis science, and the study of culture, objectively, is both comparison and generalization (Boellstorff 2008:69), where both Harbins here, novelly for anthropology, are compared, and virtual Harbin becomes a kind of generalization of actual Harbin. And, in my view, while ethnography does contribute to 'knowledge production about' sociocultural phenomena, which might be considered 'objects' of study or analysis, it also retains scientific approaches to understanding, and knowledge-production-about, the particular and singular, as well.
Not only does the actual and virtual ethnographic study of 'culture,' and here counterculture, contribute to knowledge conversations, scientifically understood (see, too, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy's entry of the philosophy of science, 2005:852), but virtual world building, additionally, “can be crucial … for imagining the kinds of communities that human groups can create with the help of emerging technologies” (Escobar 1994). ...
(November 25, 2010)
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Sphenodontia: appeal of a virtual Harbin for some researchers and students of virtual worlds might be new methodological possibilities
Harbin ethnography:
... While Clifford is writing about the Mashpee, and their land claims of the past few decades, in what is now the state of Massachusetts, I extend his language to help frame the emergence of Harbin identity - not quite a tribe as I see it although this language is sometimes used - out of the contested '60s. Here at Harbin, residents, visitors and guests visit, and have visited, the springs to earn a living or to get away from the city, and because they like the fabric of life, in the context of modernity, and now do this online in the context of the digital revolution.
One appeal of a virtual Harbin for some researchers and students of virtual worlds might be new methodological possibilities to use, for example, “elicitation” approaches (Boellstorff 2008:68), that is, slightly more structured interview approaches, as well as statistical analyses, especially linguistically, than participant observation, to understand 'culture' here, especially as Harbin residents understand Harbin culture at actual or in virtual Harbin. A definition of culture as rule-informed might appeal to communications and virtual world researchers who see possibilities in information technologies' remarkable structure for more systematic research, method-wise, than some of these researchers might see in participant observation, as method. Historically, actual Harbin's 'culture,' since 1972, has a lot of 'water under the bridge,' so to speak, which I, as ethnographer, don't know, but which influences this '60s-informed culture in far-reaching ways, as I interpret Harbin. Virtual Harbin in Open Simulator is new, the first one was stolen, and the relationship between the actual Harbin, with its history since the 1960s, and 1972 when Ishvara bought the land, and the emergent, virtual Harbin, could easily make 'elicitation' approaches, as I see it, problematic. “Elicitation methods,” per Boellstorff, involve an assumption that informants have conscious understandings specifically of the culture in which they live, or the significance of the warm waters in which they soak here, which isn't usually the case with informants, and that tools like interviews and surveys, can 'elicit' these conscious understandings, explicitly and more effectively than participant observation. Participation observation, on the other hand, which includes interviews, is more fluid in its methodological approach to learning how, here, residents think of Harbin's fabric of life, especially 'culture's' latent qualities. Virtual Harbin does make possible many modes of communication for the avatar-ethnographer, and doesn't assume any 'cultural' knowledge of virtual worlds', or virtual Harbin's, culture, on the part of any informants. Methodologically, however, the lack of structure of culture itself, per Clifford's definition above, makes any new methodological approaches arising due to information technologies and virtual worlds problematic, in the same way that trying to tease the 'culture' of a people long past out of texts, or via contemporary linguistic usage, especially reflexively, for a group of informants, is problematic. Yet in contemporary virtual world technologies, cultural communication possibilities increase, as do group landscape and cultural artifact building processes (a form of Techne in virtual worlds like Second Life), making participant observation, as method, even richer than only in the actual, in some ways; the 'actual' (e.g. actual Harbin) is already extraordinarily rich, actually. With actual and virtual Harbins, especially with still-rudimentary headsets that can read your 'brain waves,' for example, the articulations and conjunctions expand further, and actual and virtual participant observation, as method, can seek to understand new cultural temporalities and processes.
If culture, like identity, can be “conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject... ” (Clifford, 1988:344), ethnography has a rich tradition of research for studying this, making possible nuanced 'knowledge about' people, and the 'other,' representable, both actually and virtually. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sphenodontia-appeal-of-virtual-harbin.html - November 24, 2010)
... While Clifford is writing about the Mashpee, and their land claims of the past few decades, in what is now the state of Massachusetts, I extend his language to help frame the emergence of Harbin identity - not quite a tribe as I see it although this language is sometimes used - out of the contested '60s. Here at Harbin, residents, visitors and guests visit, and have visited, the springs to earn a living or to get away from the city, and because they like the fabric of life, in the context of modernity, and now do this online in the context of the digital revolution.
One appeal of a virtual Harbin for some researchers and students of virtual worlds might be new methodological possibilities to use, for example, “elicitation” approaches (Boellstorff 2008:68), that is, slightly more structured interview approaches, as well as statistical analyses, especially linguistically, than participant observation, to understand 'culture' here, especially as Harbin residents understand Harbin culture at actual or in virtual Harbin. A definition of culture as rule-informed might appeal to communications and virtual world researchers who see possibilities in information technologies' remarkable structure for more systematic research, method-wise, than some of these researchers might see in participant observation, as method. Historically, actual Harbin's 'culture,' since 1972, has a lot of 'water under the bridge,' so to speak, which I, as ethnographer, don't know, but which influences this '60s-informed culture in far-reaching ways, as I interpret Harbin. Virtual Harbin in Open Simulator is new, the first one was stolen, and the relationship between the actual Harbin, with its history since the 1960s, and 1972 when Ishvara bought the land, and the emergent, virtual Harbin, could easily make 'elicitation' approaches, as I see it, problematic. “Elicitation methods,” per Boellstorff, involve an assumption that informants have conscious understandings specifically of the culture in which they live, or the significance of the warm waters in which they soak here, which isn't usually the case with informants, and that tools like interviews and surveys, can 'elicit' these conscious understandings, explicitly and more effectively than participant observation. Participation observation, on the other hand, which includes interviews, is more fluid in its methodological approach to learning how, here, residents think of Harbin's fabric of life, especially 'culture's' latent qualities. Virtual Harbin does make possible many modes of communication for the avatar-ethnographer, and doesn't assume any 'cultural' knowledge of virtual worlds', or virtual Harbin's, culture, on the part of any informants. Methodologically, however, the lack of structure of culture itself, per Clifford's definition above, makes any new methodological approaches arising due to information technologies and virtual worlds problematic, in the same way that trying to tease the 'culture' of a people long past out of texts, or via contemporary linguistic usage, especially reflexively, for a group of informants, is problematic. Yet in contemporary virtual world technologies, cultural communication possibilities increase, as do group landscape and cultural artifact building processes (a form of Techne in virtual worlds like Second Life), making participant observation, as method, even richer than only in the actual, in some ways; the 'actual' (e.g. actual Harbin) is already extraordinarily rich, actually. With actual and virtual Harbins, especially with still-rudimentary headsets that can read your 'brain waves,' for example, the articulations and conjunctions expand further, and actual and virtual participant observation, as method, can seek to understand new cultural temporalities and processes.
If culture, like identity, can be “conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject... ” (Clifford, 1988:344), ethnography has a rich tradition of research for studying this, making possible nuanced 'knowledge about' people, and the 'other,' representable, both actually and virtually. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sphenodontia-appeal-of-virtual-harbin.html - November 24, 2010)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Dark-eyed junco (junco hyemalis): There's deliciousness in the relaxation response
There's deliciousness in the relaxation response, and, sometimes in the bodymind release, bliss neurophysiology seeps up ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Relaxation_Response where you'll find some steps and resources, to which you can also add.
... for me, in releasing, bliss neurophysiology just kind of bubbles up like warm water from the earth ...
How to cultivate this process?
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/dark-eyed-junco-junco-hyemalis-theres.html - November 23, 2010)
... for me, in releasing, bliss neurophysiology just kind of bubbles up like warm water from the earth ...
How to cultivate this process?
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/dark-eyed-junco-junco-hyemalis-theres.html - November 23, 2010)
Hot & Cool Pools: Actual & virtual Harbin communication codes informed by fluid, warm-water, clothing-optional, & hippy-to-the-hot-springs thinking
Harbin ethnography:
... Nevertheless, communication emerges as an important new development in this anthropological interpretation of these Harbin cultures and its avatars and virtual worlds.
Actual and virtual Harbin communication codes are informed by fluid, warm-water, clothing-optional, and hippy-to-the-hot-springs thinking, in this interpretation. But actual Harbin emerges in an historical sense in this ethnography since 1972, when Ishvara bought the property, while virtual Harbin emerges in relation to this in the context of interactive communication technologies making virtual world building possible, and the emergence of related, sociocultural processes. Anthropological definitions of culture as code, habit, capability (Boellstorff 2008:68) etc., which the people who are part of the group 'know,' - cultural protocols, or rules, in a sense - each open possibilities for understanding actual and virtual Harbin, as well as further refining concepts of culture, anthropologically, vis-a-vis the whole, which, here are both actual and virtual Harbins. And while a virtual Harbin field site as laboratory for probabilistic analyses of sociocultural processes may appeal to communication theorists and empirical researchers, the concept of culture I here choose to develop for framing methods for studying actual and particularly virtual Harbin is interpretive, and communication-centric, focusing on the whole, where the sociocultural processes that interest me are latent and un-reified ('unthingified'). In terms of the concept of culture, I further focus on Harbin identity in this ethnography vis-a-vis information technologies, and which, to quote Jim Clifford, referring to the Mashpee indians, involves an ongoing “'reinterpretation of [their] contested history in order to act – with other Indian groups – powerfully, in an impure present-becoming-future.' Suggesting a concept of identity which is neither bound by culture nor ethnographic authority, he rhetorically asks 'Yet what if identity is conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject?'” (Clifford, 1988:344 in MacLeod 2003). While Clifford is writing about the Mashpee, and their land claims of the past few decades, in what is now the state of Massachusetts, I extend his language to help frame the emergence of Harbin identity - not quite a tribe as I see it although this language is sometimes used - out of the contested '60s. Here at Harbin, residents, visitors and guests visit, and have visited, the springs to earn a living or to get away from the city, and because they like the fabric of life, in the context of modernity, and now do this online in the context of the digital revolution.
One appeal of a virtual Harbin for some researchers and students of virtual worlds might be new methodological possibilities to use, for example, “elicitation” approaches (Boellstorff 2008:68), that is, slightly more structured interview approaches, as well as statistical analyses, especially linguistically, than participant observation, to understand 'culture' here, especially as Harbin residents understand Harbin culture at actual or in virtual Harbin. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hot-cool-pools-actual-virtual-harbin.html - November 23, 2010)
... Nevertheless, communication emerges as an important new development in this anthropological interpretation of these Harbin cultures and its avatars and virtual worlds.
Actual and virtual Harbin communication codes are informed by fluid, warm-water, clothing-optional, and hippy-to-the-hot-springs thinking, in this interpretation. But actual Harbin emerges in an historical sense in this ethnography since 1972, when Ishvara bought the property, while virtual Harbin emerges in relation to this in the context of interactive communication technologies making virtual world building possible, and the emergence of related, sociocultural processes. Anthropological definitions of culture as code, habit, capability (Boellstorff 2008:68) etc., which the people who are part of the group 'know,' - cultural protocols, or rules, in a sense - each open possibilities for understanding actual and virtual Harbin, as well as further refining concepts of culture, anthropologically, vis-a-vis the whole, which, here are both actual and virtual Harbins. And while a virtual Harbin field site as laboratory for probabilistic analyses of sociocultural processes may appeal to communication theorists and empirical researchers, the concept of culture I here choose to develop for framing methods for studying actual and particularly virtual Harbin is interpretive, and communication-centric, focusing on the whole, where the sociocultural processes that interest me are latent and un-reified ('unthingified'). In terms of the concept of culture, I further focus on Harbin identity in this ethnography vis-a-vis information technologies, and which, to quote Jim Clifford, referring to the Mashpee indians, involves an ongoing “'reinterpretation of [their] contested history in order to act – with other Indian groups – powerfully, in an impure present-becoming-future.' Suggesting a concept of identity which is neither bound by culture nor ethnographic authority, he rhetorically asks 'Yet what if identity is conceived not as a boundary to be maintained but as a nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject?'” (Clifford, 1988:344 in MacLeod 2003). While Clifford is writing about the Mashpee, and their land claims of the past few decades, in what is now the state of Massachusetts, I extend his language to help frame the emergence of Harbin identity - not quite a tribe as I see it although this language is sometimes used - out of the contested '60s. Here at Harbin, residents, visitors and guests visit, and have visited, the springs to earn a living or to get away from the city, and because they like the fabric of life, in the context of modernity, and now do this online in the context of the digital revolution.
One appeal of a virtual Harbin for some researchers and students of virtual worlds might be new methodological possibilities to use, for example, “elicitation” approaches (Boellstorff 2008:68), that is, slightly more structured interview approaches, as well as statistical analyses, especially linguistically, than participant observation, to understand 'culture' here, especially as Harbin residents understand Harbin culture at actual or in virtual Harbin. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/hot-cool-pools-actual-virtual-harbin.html - November 23, 2010)
Monday, November 22, 2010
Branta ruficollis: A National Digital Library, World Univ & Sch's Library Resources as great start for an World Digital Library
A National Digital Library ...
Here's Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson's blog about this possibility -
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/nesson/2010/11/21/design-opportunity/ ...
Perhaps World University and School's Library Resources -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources -
is a great start ... eventually in all 3000-8000 languages ...
a World Digital Library
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/branta-ruficollis-national-digital.html - November 22, 2010)
Here's Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson's blog about this possibility -
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/nesson/2010/11/21/design-opportunity/ ...
Perhaps World University and School's Library Resources -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources -
is a great start ... eventually in all 3000-8000 languages ...
a World Digital Library
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/branta-ruficollis-national-digital.html - November 22, 2010)
Red Rock with Green: Open World University & School meetings ... on-the-ground and face-to-face (and in virtual worlds) ... may be in the future
Open World University and School meetings ...
on-the-ground and face-to-face (and in virtual worlds) ...
may be in the future ...
at a university or conference you attend ...
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/red-rock-with-green-open-world.html - November 22, 2010)
on-the-ground and face-to-face (and in virtual worlds) ...
may be in the future ...
at a university or conference you attend ...
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/red-rock-with-green-open-world.html - November 22, 2010)
Wild: Harbin est une église du New Age - http://harbin.org - et est très intéressant pour l'anthropologie, Best understood in the context of modernity
Harbin est une église du New Age ... http://harbin.org ... et est très intéressant pour l'anthropologie ... . ... (pas de tou et pas du tout) ... Has a new tribe emerged there? More research is needed ...
I think the above words are best understood in the context of modernity, the '60s, and the English language ....
... and now also in terms of the Information Technology revolution and the Network Society ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/wild-harbin-est-une-eglise-du-new-age.html - November 22, 2010)
I think the above words are best understood in the context of modernity, the '60s, and the English language ....
... and now also in terms of the Information Technology revolution and the Network Society ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/wild-harbin-est-une-eglise-du-new-age.html - November 22, 2010)
Desolation Wilderness: An avatar-ethnographer, Virtual Watsu with another avatar visiting virtual Harbin, Multi-modalities of Communication as Message
Harbin ethnography:
... As one example of how communication is different in virtual worlds, compared with the actual world, information technologies extend the possibilities for symbolizing, and communicating, now in relation to virtual Harbin.
For example, an avatar-ethnographer could both participate in the virtual Watsu (water shiatsu), with another avatar visiting virtual Harbin, as they talk in voice, and group text-chat about the Watsu, perhaps while watching an instructional Watsu video in this virtual world from the pool, and as they script/code their avatars to add subtle, nuanced, and perhaps new, in-the-virtual-warm-pool movements. This might involve innovating with Watsu, due to the medium of virtual water (e.g. see these Second Life dance scripts: ). The avatar-ethnographer then might interpret this Watsu and these developments with a reading of the sociocultural significance of information technologies, and Harbin as Heart Consciousness Church (HCC), vis-a-vis the freedom and ease of Watsu, and the freedom-seeking movements and healing creativity, some of which involved hippies going to hot springs, of the 1960s. In terms of communication and participant observation, the avatar-ethnographer can begin to examine the significance of virtual world, mediated language-use, even generating machinima's (virtual world animated videos), transcripts and documents of group-text chat, as well as potentially recording conversations, with avatar permission, and within the ethics of the anthropological, field work, or water play, practices. And in terms of identity and participant observation, for example, the avatar-ethnographer could also then virtually participate in an educational, virtual, Harbin Watsu and might interpret it in the context of Harbin as a Watsu school. The culture of actual Harbin from which Watsu as a new, human, social therapy and movement form emerges, would then inform the culture of virtual Harbin, in which Watsu is further explored, and in which innovations may also find form. And face-to-face, body-to-body, avatar-face-to-avatar-face and avatar-body-to-avatar-body communication become possible (see this still buggy, avatar-face information technology: ) through actual and virtual Watsu (Boellstorff 2008:67). In terms of agency, the Harbin Hot Springs' avatar-ethnographer emerges as a new co-agent, or actor, participating with, as well as observing (potentially anonymously, too, since avatars' actual identities are often not know) other virtual Harbin avatar visitors. While not interpretively language/communication-, identity-, network-, information technological- or agent-centered, for example, in an ethnographic, conceptual sense, the avatar-ethnographer engages aspects of related questions in her analysis of virtual Harbin cultural practices, digitally. Nevertheless, communication emerges as an important new development in this anthropological interpretation of these Harbin cultures and its avatars and virtual worlds.
Actual and virtual Harbin communication codes are informed by fluid, warm-water, clothing-optional, and hippy-to-the-hot-springs thinking, in this interpretation. …
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/desolation-wilderness-harbin-actual-and.html - November 22, 2010)
... As one example of how communication is different in virtual worlds, compared with the actual world, information technologies extend the possibilities for symbolizing, and communicating, now in relation to virtual Harbin.
For example, an avatar-ethnographer could both participate in the virtual Watsu (water shiatsu), with another avatar visiting virtual Harbin, as they talk in voice, and group text-chat about the Watsu, perhaps while watching an instructional Watsu video in this virtual world from the pool, and as they script/code their avatars to add subtle, nuanced, and perhaps new, in-the-virtual-warm-pool movements. This might involve innovating with Watsu, due to the medium of virtual water (e.g. see these Second Life dance scripts: ). The avatar-ethnographer then might interpret this Watsu and these developments with a reading of the sociocultural significance of information technologies, and Harbin as Heart Consciousness Church (HCC), vis-a-vis the freedom and ease of Watsu, and the freedom-seeking movements and healing creativity, some of which involved hippies going to hot springs, of the 1960s. In terms of communication and participant observation, the avatar-ethnographer can begin to examine the significance of virtual world, mediated language-use, even generating machinima's (virtual world animated videos), transcripts and documents of group-text chat, as well as potentially recording conversations, with avatar permission, and within the ethics of the anthropological, field work, or water play, practices. And in terms of identity and participant observation, for example, the avatar-ethnographer could also then virtually participate in an educational, virtual, Harbin Watsu and might interpret it in the context of Harbin as a Watsu school. The culture of actual Harbin from which Watsu as a new, human, social therapy and movement form emerges, would then inform the culture of virtual Harbin, in which Watsu is further explored, and in which innovations may also find form. And face-to-face, body-to-body, avatar-face-to-avatar-face and avatar-body-to-avatar-body communication become possible (see this still buggy, avatar-face information technology: ) through actual and virtual Watsu (Boellstorff 2008:67). In terms of agency, the Harbin Hot Springs' avatar-ethnographer emerges as a new co-agent, or actor, participating with, as well as observing (potentially anonymously, too, since avatars' actual identities are often not know) other virtual Harbin avatar visitors. While not interpretively language/communication-, identity-, network-, information technological- or agent-centered, for example, in an ethnographic, conceptual sense, the avatar-ethnographer engages aspects of related questions in her analysis of virtual Harbin cultural practices, digitally. Nevertheless, communication emerges as an important new development in this anthropological interpretation of these Harbin cultures and its avatars and virtual worlds.
Actual and virtual Harbin communication codes are informed by fluid, warm-water, clothing-optional, and hippy-to-the-hot-springs thinking, in this interpretation. …
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/desolation-wilderness-harbin-actual-and.html - November 22, 2010)
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Dew ~ Poetry ...
Poetry ...
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/poetry
and an open, editable, Poetry subject at World University & School ...
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry
for Teaching, Learning, Conversing about ...
*
And here's a poem:
Water ~ into Warmth
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/water_11.html
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/dew-poetry.html - November 21, 2010)
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/poetry
and an open, editable, Poetry subject at World University & School ...
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry
for Teaching, Learning, Conversing about ...
*
And here's a poem:
Water ~ into Warmth
http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/water_11.html
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/dew-poetry.html - November 21, 2010)
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Iguana Eye: If much teaching and learning occurred in virtual worlds, and on the web, Students' Carbon Footprint Would Lessen
If much teaching and learning occurred in virtual worlds, and on the web, at all levels, the carbon footprint of students traveling to and from schools, colleges, and universities, etc., would be much, much smaller than it is now (commerce, too), and the conversation and representational teaching and learning content (books, programs, etc.) is much richer, as well as in terms of choice.
How to change the culture of learning, where learning becomes really fun, and students become very focused?
Culturally, other countries have different ethos' of learning ...
What kind of learning and teaching culture does the U.S., for example, want?
Here's an opportunity to teach about this - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/iguana-eye-if-much-teaching-and.html - November 20, 2010)
How to change the culture of learning, where learning becomes really fun, and students become very focused?
Culturally, other countries have different ethos' of learning ...
What kind of learning and teaching culture does the U.S., for example, want?
Here's an opportunity to teach about this - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/iguana-eye-if-much-teaching-and.html - November 20, 2010)
Friday, November 19, 2010
Helianthus: Successful Undergraduate Programs Teaching Critical & Innovative Thinking? Loving Bliss Innovations?
World Univ & Sch is incorporated & has the very beginnings of resources coming in to develop great, focused, Reed College-like teaching & learning (Humanities' conference-style) ...
What other undergraduate programs successfully (?) teach students how to think critically?
How might http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ build on this?
... with distribution requirements (languages, science, social science and everybody is required to take Freshman Humanities, etc), 'traditional' subjects, reading of primary texts ...
'life of the mind,'
no organized sports,
no fraternities or sororities ...
*
As an example of critical or innovative thinking, how might we elicit loving bliss neurophysiology when and as we want it, naturally?
There's an open, editable, subject for this at World Univ & Sch, where you can add your ideas about this.
As practices? MDMA is a reference experience. As 'flow' experiences (v-a-v Csikszentmihalyi)? ...
Here's an invitation to come into conversation abt this at WUaS or with friends.
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology)
*
http://ecographica.blogspot.com/2009/12/wetland-plant-of-week-37.html
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/helianthus-successful-undergraduate.html - November 19, 2010)
What other undergraduate programs successfully (?) teach students how to think critically?
How might http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ build on this?
... with distribution requirements (languages, science, social science and everybody is required to take Freshman Humanities, etc), 'traditional' subjects, reading of primary texts ...
'life of the mind,'
no organized sports,
no fraternities or sororities ...
*
As an example of critical or innovative thinking, how might we elicit loving bliss neurophysiology when and as we want it, naturally?
There's an open, editable, subject for this at World Univ & Sch, where you can add your ideas about this.
As practices? MDMA is a reference experience. As 'flow' experiences (v-a-v Csikszentmihalyi)? ...
Here's an invitation to come into conversation abt this at WUaS or with friends.
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology)
*
http://ecographica.blogspot.com/2009/12/wetland-plant-of-week-37.html
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/helianthus-successful-undergraduate.html - November 19, 2010)
Heliconius heurippa: Music and 'Hard' Science Innovation via WUaS?, Rorty as Philosophical Innovator, WUaS Primatology - Bonobo Chimps & Common Chimps
In what ways will World University' Music School
{http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Music_School},
with its classical (e.g. Western & Indian, etc.) as well as jamming possibilities,
come into conversation via the web to even transform, for example, experimental approaches in the 'hard' sciences ...
through kinds of 'riffing' / innovating ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/
Did Richard Rorty (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Rorty,_Richard), for example, extend philosophy's scope, by 'riffing' / innovating with metaphysics and epistemology?
*
Check out the videos here at the Primatology page at World Univ & Sch: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Primatology ... found more interesting ones ... common chimps fight over sex, according to one video, but Bonobo chimps don't, as I understand it :) ...
Speciation:
(http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/06/29/another-origin-of-species/)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/heliconius-heurippa-music-and-hard.html - November 19, 2010)
{http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Music_School},
with its classical (e.g. Western & Indian, etc.) as well as jamming possibilities,
come into conversation via the web to even transform, for example, experimental approaches in the 'hard' sciences ...
through kinds of 'riffing' / innovating ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/
Did Richard Rorty (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Rorty,_Richard), for example, extend philosophy's scope, by 'riffing' / innovating with metaphysics and epistemology?
*
Check out the videos here at the Primatology page at World Univ & Sch: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Primatology ... found more interesting ones ... common chimps fight over sex, according to one video, but Bonobo chimps don't, as I understand it :) ...
Speciation:
(http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/06/29/another-origin-of-species/)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/heliconius-heurippa-music-and-hard.html - November 19, 2010)
Gabbroic Layer of Earth's Crust: The positing of a culturally significant avatar-ethnographer, Virtual Harbin Hot Springs
Harbin ethnography:
... In the case of this actual and virtual Harbin ethnography, an avatar-ethnographer who both creates a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator as well as helps Harbin residents and visitors to create it, and then lives in virtual Harbin for the next few decades, in seeking to understand the sociocultural life which emerges there, vis-a-vis on-the-ground Harbin, and writes about this, gives form to new and developing conceptions of culture {counterculture?}.
The positing of a culturally significant avatar-ethnographer both making, and studying, a field site like virtual Harbin Hot Springs, and avatars as Harbin visitors and residents, highlight the significance of not only interactive multimedia, but also crafting (Techne viz. Boellstorff) and, especially, communicative processes, as important in the practices of ethnography for the study of virtual culture. Actual and virtual Harbins are kinds of irreverent-in-the-way-hippies-are, soak-in-the-pools, countercultural churches, informed by the 1960s in the context of modernity and the information technology revolution, where ethnographic practices, such as interviews and participant observation, are important methods for their study, as counterculture. As an avatar-ethnographer, I've found in other contexts in Second Life that multiple avatars, in virtual worlds such as Second Life and Open Simulator, can communicate both in voice and text-chat at the same time, as a group, even while 'real time' video is streaming into the virtual island where the avatars have gathered. That is, two concurrent, communication processes, like talking in an actual group concurrently while group-writing on actual paper to communicate, are possible, and is an example of how human, communication processes are new in virtual worlds. As avatar-ethnographer, if the medium is the 'sociocultural' message, then this multi-modality of communicative processes is significant for ethnographic interpretation, here in the case of actual and virtual Harbin, and gesturally, as well. As one example of how communication is different in virtual worlds, compared with the actual world, information technologies extend the possibilities for symbolizing, and communicating, now in relation to virtual Harbin.
For example, an avatar-ethnographer could both participate in the virtual Watsu (water shiatsu), with another avatar visiting virtual Harbin, as they talk in voice, and group text-chat about the Watsu, perhaps while watching an instructional Watsu video in this virtual world from the pool, and as they script/code their avatars to add subtle, nuanced, and perhaps new, in-the-virtual-warm-pool movements. …
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/gabbroic-layer-of-earths-crust-positing.html - November 19, 2010)
... In the case of this actual and virtual Harbin ethnography, an avatar-ethnographer who both creates a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator as well as helps Harbin residents and visitors to create it, and then lives in virtual Harbin for the next few decades, in seeking to understand the sociocultural life which emerges there, vis-a-vis on-the-ground Harbin, and writes about this, gives form to new and developing conceptions of culture {counterculture?}.
The positing of a culturally significant avatar-ethnographer both making, and studying, a field site like virtual Harbin Hot Springs, and avatars as Harbin visitors and residents, highlight the significance of not only interactive multimedia, but also crafting (Techne viz. Boellstorff) and, especially, communicative processes, as important in the practices of ethnography for the study of virtual culture. Actual and virtual Harbins are kinds of irreverent-in-the-way-hippies-are, soak-in-the-pools, countercultural churches, informed by the 1960s in the context of modernity and the information technology revolution, where ethnographic practices, such as interviews and participant observation, are important methods for their study, as counterculture. As an avatar-ethnographer, I've found in other contexts in Second Life that multiple avatars, in virtual worlds such as Second Life and Open Simulator, can communicate both in voice and text-chat at the same time, as a group, even while 'real time' video is streaming into the virtual island where the avatars have gathered. That is, two concurrent, communication processes, like talking in an actual group concurrently while group-writing on actual paper to communicate, are possible, and is an example of how human, communication processes are new in virtual worlds. As avatar-ethnographer, if the medium is the 'sociocultural' message, then this multi-modality of communicative processes is significant for ethnographic interpretation, here in the case of actual and virtual Harbin, and gesturally, as well. As one example of how communication is different in virtual worlds, compared with the actual world, information technologies extend the possibilities for symbolizing, and communicating, now in relation to virtual Harbin.
For example, an avatar-ethnographer could both participate in the virtual Watsu (water shiatsu), with another avatar visiting virtual Harbin, as they talk in voice, and group text-chat about the Watsu, perhaps while watching an instructional Watsu video in this virtual world from the pool, and as they script/code their avatars to add subtle, nuanced, and perhaps new, in-the-virtual-warm-pool movements. …
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/gabbroic-layer-of-earths-crust-positing.html - November 19, 2010)
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Rock Lichen: Ethnography in person & Avatar-Ethnographer
Harbin ethnography:
... As salient aspects of Harbin's 'culture,' these latent 'codes' are examples of “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor 1871:1) as well as “practice - the ethnographic and polyphonic representation of ‘culture,’ shaped by conjuncture rather than essence – to shape specific understandings of cultural and historical identity” (James Clifford in MacLeod 2003), and of the focus of my anthropological study, ethnographically.
Ethnography in person, and ethnography, where an avatar, like mine named “Aphilo Aarde,” who builds a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator, which becomes part of a grid of virtual islands', and then, when avatars begin to visit it, starts to study what occurs communicatively there, raises fascinating and important methodological questions about culture and virtual ethnography – counterculture, in the case of Harbin - as well as the role of the avatar-ethnographer, in terms of how to conduct ethnographic research in virtual worlds. In terms of representation, for example, what is the relationship of ethnography, for example, with fiction, now informed by interactive multimedia, and the possibility for anyone to generate a virtual world or island, which then can become a social space; fiction writers have produced some of the most important interpretations of virtual world sociality thus far, as have blog writers and web site makers (Boellstorff 2008: 66). Anthropologists, among media studies' scholars, computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, literary studies' scholars, and cultural studies' theorists are just beginning to contribute significantly to this conversation. Analyses of avatars, virtual worlds and the avatar-ethnographer vis-a-vis dividuals (e.g. Strathern), cyborgs (e.g. Harraway), posthumans, prosthetics, interstitial spaces, Actor Network Theory (Latour), hyperreality (Baudrillard), vis-a-vis culture, for example, are relatively underexamined in the discipline of anthropology. Perhaps due to the challenges that emerge in understanding and characterizing processes and temporalities of culture, emerging due to information technologies, the conjunctures between sociocultural processes, avatars, and virtual worlds have remained at some distance from central questions informing ethnographic practice in recent decades. In the case of this actual and virtual Harbin ethnography, an avatar-ethnographer who both creates a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator as well as helps Harbin residents and visitors to create it, and then lives in virtual Harbin for the next few decades, in seeking to understand the sociocultural life which emerges there, vis-a-vis on-the-ground Harbin, and writes about this, gives form to new and developing conceptions of culture {counterculture?}.
The positing of a culturally significant avatar-ethnographer both making, and studying, a field site like virtual Harbin Hot Springs, and avatars as Harbin visitors and residents, highlight the significance of not only interactive multimedia, but also crafting (Techne viz. Boellstorff) and, especially, communicative processes, as important in the practices of ethnography for the study of virtual culture. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/rock-lichen-ethnography-in-person.html - November 18, 2010)
... As salient aspects of Harbin's 'culture,' these latent 'codes' are examples of “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor 1871:1) as well as “practice - the ethnographic and polyphonic representation of ‘culture,’ shaped by conjuncture rather than essence – to shape specific understandings of cultural and historical identity” (James Clifford in MacLeod 2003), and of the focus of my anthropological study, ethnographically.
Ethnography in person, and ethnography, where an avatar, like mine named “Aphilo Aarde,” who builds a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator, which becomes part of a grid of virtual islands', and then, when avatars begin to visit it, starts to study what occurs communicatively there, raises fascinating and important methodological questions about culture and virtual ethnography – counterculture, in the case of Harbin - as well as the role of the avatar-ethnographer, in terms of how to conduct ethnographic research in virtual worlds. In terms of representation, for example, what is the relationship of ethnography, for example, with fiction, now informed by interactive multimedia, and the possibility for anyone to generate a virtual world or island, which then can become a social space; fiction writers have produced some of the most important interpretations of virtual world sociality thus far, as have blog writers and web site makers (Boellstorff 2008: 66). Anthropologists, among media studies' scholars, computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, literary studies' scholars, and cultural studies' theorists are just beginning to contribute significantly to this conversation. Analyses of avatars, virtual worlds and the avatar-ethnographer vis-a-vis dividuals (e.g. Strathern), cyborgs (e.g. Harraway), posthumans, prosthetics, interstitial spaces, Actor Network Theory (Latour), hyperreality (Baudrillard), vis-a-vis culture, for example, are relatively underexamined in the discipline of anthropology. Perhaps due to the challenges that emerge in understanding and characterizing processes and temporalities of culture, emerging due to information technologies, the conjunctures between sociocultural processes, avatars, and virtual worlds have remained at some distance from central questions informing ethnographic practice in recent decades. In the case of this actual and virtual Harbin ethnography, an avatar-ethnographer who both creates a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator as well as helps Harbin residents and visitors to create it, and then lives in virtual Harbin for the next few decades, in seeking to understand the sociocultural life which emerges there, vis-a-vis on-the-ground Harbin, and writes about this, gives form to new and developing conceptions of culture {counterculture?}.
The positing of a culturally significant avatar-ethnographer both making, and studying, a field site like virtual Harbin Hot Springs, and avatars as Harbin visitors and residents, highlight the significance of not only interactive multimedia, but also crafting (Techne viz. Boellstorff) and, especially, communicative processes, as important in the practices of ethnography for the study of virtual culture. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/rock-lichen-ethnography-in-person.html - November 18, 2010)
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Tide pool life: As method, anthropology involves approaches to the study of multiple aspects of the human experience, Culture
Harbin ethnography:
... In this reading of approaches to data-gathering and ethnography, digital 'pool play' is new in the discipline and practices of ethnography, and now virtual ethnography.
As method, anthropology involves approaches to the study of multiple aspects of the human experience as culture, which, for convenience's sake, is an umbrella term, here, for the methods of sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, paleontological approaches to human origins, as well as linguistics. Anthropology as a discipline, here, includes a much wider record, and time periods, including the contemporary, than ethnography as a discipline might include, and extends concepts of culture, beyond aspects informed by the study of sociocultural processes. For example, the making of virtual Harbin as ethnographic fieldsite, and the study of virtual Harbins (virtual Harbin in OpenSim, the Yahoo Harbin ride board, Harbin Tribe.com sites), here, involves projecting into the future for methods to study both a developing, virtual field site, as well as methods for studying the relationships between actual and virtual Harbins, as they develop together. I see studying Harbin, for example, for the next few decades, involving much research, anticipating the future in the Harbin 'now,' both actually and virtually. The anthropology of avatar-mediated communication and linguistics is relatively new in anthropology, where multimedia-informed 'pool play,' in lieu of digital field work, in the case of virtual Harbin, gives form to new interpretive practices in the discipline of anthropology. In my interpretation, the Harbin waters become non-terra firma 'place,' and, for example, the nakedness, the silence and the cuddling in the Harbin warm pool become new aspects for anthropological and ethnographic participant-observation methods. As salient aspects of Harbin's 'culture,' these latent 'codes' are examples of “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor 1871:1) as well as “practice - the ethnographic and polyphonic representation of ‘culture,’ shaped by conjuncture rather than essence – to shape specific understandings of cultural and historical identity” (James Clifford in MacLeod 2003), and of the focus of my anthropological study, ethnographically.
Ethnography in person, and ethnography, where an avatar, like mine named “Aphilo Aarde,” who builds a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator, which becomes part of a grid of virtual islands', and then, when avatars begin to visit it, starts to study what occurs communicatively there, raises fascinating and important methodological questions about culture and virtual ethnography – counterculture, in the case of Harbin - as well as the role of the avatar-ethnographer, in terms of how to conduct ethnographic research in virtual worlds. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tide-pool-life-as-method-anthropology.html - November 17, 2010)
... In this reading of approaches to data-gathering and ethnography, digital 'pool play' is new in the discipline and practices of ethnography, and now virtual ethnography.
As method, anthropology involves approaches to the study of multiple aspects of the human experience as culture, which, for convenience's sake, is an umbrella term, here, for the methods of sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, paleontological approaches to human origins, as well as linguistics. Anthropology as a discipline, here, includes a much wider record, and time periods, including the contemporary, than ethnography as a discipline might include, and extends concepts of culture, beyond aspects informed by the study of sociocultural processes. For example, the making of virtual Harbin as ethnographic fieldsite, and the study of virtual Harbins (virtual Harbin in OpenSim, the Yahoo Harbin ride board, Harbin Tribe.com sites), here, involves projecting into the future for methods to study both a developing, virtual field site, as well as methods for studying the relationships between actual and virtual Harbins, as they develop together. I see studying Harbin, for example, for the next few decades, involving much research, anticipating the future in the Harbin 'now,' both actually and virtually. The anthropology of avatar-mediated communication and linguistics is relatively new in anthropology, where multimedia-informed 'pool play,' in lieu of digital field work, in the case of virtual Harbin, gives form to new interpretive practices in the discipline of anthropology. In my interpretation, the Harbin waters become non-terra firma 'place,' and, for example, the nakedness, the silence and the cuddling in the Harbin warm pool become new aspects for anthropological and ethnographic participant-observation methods. As salient aspects of Harbin's 'culture,' these latent 'codes' are examples of “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tylor 1871:1) as well as “practice - the ethnographic and polyphonic representation of ‘culture,’ shaped by conjuncture rather than essence – to shape specific understandings of cultural and historical identity” (James Clifford in MacLeod 2003), and of the focus of my anthropological study, ethnographically.
Ethnography in person, and ethnography, where an avatar, like mine named “Aphilo Aarde,” who builds a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator, which becomes part of a grid of virtual islands', and then, when avatars begin to visit it, starts to study what occurs communicatively there, raises fascinating and important methodological questions about culture and virtual ethnography – counterculture, in the case of Harbin - as well as the role of the avatar-ethnographer, in terms of how to conduct ethnographic research in virtual worlds. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tide-pool-life-as-method-anthropology.html - November 17, 2010)
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Rock pool: Ethnographic processes for data gathering, Ethnography as an Interpretive Process & a Genre of Social Science Writing
Harbin ethnography:
... Virtual Harbin thus, for example, rewrites anthropological and ethnographic methods in new ways to engage both multimedia-virtuality – where representations are at a physical and actual distance from the end-user – on the screen - focusing immersively on the little things, as well as on actual Harbin virtuality, drawing on a myriad of actual, Harbin experiences (e.g. of oneness in the pools) since 1972, to inform complementary methods.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
As method, I engage ethnographic processes as main, ongoing approaches to data gathering at both actual Harbin, and in virtual Harbin. Ethnography here is both an interpretive practice and a body of social scientific writings (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007). Ethnographic method also involves guiding questions aimed at a basic point of ethnography: gaining the world view of a group of people (Hall 1999?). Virtual ethnography here is the study of virtual worlds, and cyberspace, in relation to digital mediation, and conceptions of virtuality, employing participant observatin and field work, as method. Virtual ethnography, however, also involves the study of the virtual, including, here, that which is informed by language, communicative processes, semiotics, connotation and denotation and gesture, and now multimedia, involving virtuality's analysis. At Harbin, ethnography of actual and virtual Harbins involve examining those fabrics of life which emerge in relation to their warm waters, in this pools-centric interpretation of Harbin. In this reading of approaches to data-gathering and ethnography, digital 'pool play' is new in the discipline and practices of ethnography, and now virtual ethnography.
As method, anthropology involves approaches to the study of multiple aspects of the human experience as culture, which, for convenience's sake, is an umbrella term, here, for the methods of sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, paleontological approaches to human origins, as well as linguistics. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/harbin-ethnography.html - November 16, 2010)
... Virtual Harbin thus, for example, rewrites anthropological and ethnographic methods in new ways to engage both multimedia-virtuality – where representations are at a physical and actual distance from the end-user – on the screen - focusing immersively on the little things, as well as on actual Harbin virtuality, drawing on a myriad of actual, Harbin experiences (e.g. of oneness in the pools) since 1972, to inform complementary methods.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
As method, I engage ethnographic processes as main, ongoing approaches to data gathering at both actual Harbin, and in virtual Harbin. Ethnography here is both an interpretive practice and a body of social scientific writings (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007). Ethnographic method also involves guiding questions aimed at a basic point of ethnography: gaining the world view of a group of people (Hall 1999?). Virtual ethnography here is the study of virtual worlds, and cyberspace, in relation to digital mediation, and conceptions of virtuality, employing participant observatin and field work, as method. Virtual ethnography, however, also involves the study of the virtual, including, here, that which is informed by language, communicative processes, semiotics, connotation and denotation and gesture, and now multimedia, involving virtuality's analysis. At Harbin, ethnography of actual and virtual Harbins involve examining those fabrics of life which emerge in relation to their warm waters, in this pools-centric interpretation of Harbin. In this reading of approaches to data-gathering and ethnography, digital 'pool play' is new in the discipline and practices of ethnography, and now virtual ethnography.
As method, anthropology involves approaches to the study of multiple aspects of the human experience as culture, which, for convenience's sake, is an umbrella term, here, for the methods of sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, paleontological approaches to human origins, as well as linguistics. ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/harbin-ethnography.html - November 16, 2010)
Sand Patterns: World University and School's Outline of Proposed Work, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society Academic Fellowship
World University and School's Outline of Proposed Work
I propose World University and School, as a Harvard Berkman Center Academic Fellowship 2011-2012 project, to not only engage the Berkman Center's mission “to build out into cyberspace” to learn about it, but to facilitate, educationally, an open, teaching and learning wiki, for people-to-people, and highest quality, educational content, and conversations. Through an open, free-to-students, “wiki” (editable web pages) in all languages, nation-states and subjects, and at all levels, with a particular focus on great universities' open educational resources, World University and School would like to generate, particularly, a new, complementary conversation in the university, broadly conceived, engaging generative information technologies, and, especially, through collaborating with a remarkable group of Berkman Fellows and Harvard faculty. World University and School (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com), which I've been developing for about 3 years, also would like to complement the Berkman Center's focus on becoming a meta-player in University and Cyberspace, particularly building on the Berkman Center's conference in Torino (especially Nesson, Gasser, Shieber, Palfrey and Fisher talks) this June 28th-30th, 2010. In the upcoming, academic fellowship year, I'd like specifically to build a community of Universitians, develop robust wiki, and other related, information technologies, as well as further approaches to resource building, in the following areas.
In outline, World University and School (WUaS) is unique among open, online university projects (most of which WUaS lists on its 'Courses' page) because, as a whole, WUaS is mission-focused, it is wiki, it is planning to be in all 3000-8000 languages, it is planning to offer online B.A., Law, M.D., and Ph.D. degrees with matriculating classes beginning in 2014. WUaS has also begun the outline of a number of schools, for example, both Law and Medical School pages, as well as a Music School, etc. And, lastly, while course-centric (you can teach any course you would like to, to your web camera or in a virtual world and link it to WUaS), WUaS also focuses aggregating content and facilitating open teaching and learning on the following main pages: courses, subjects, languages, nation states, research, library resources, museums, educational software, you at world university, hardware resource possibilities, and a foundation. WUaS also focuses on collaborating with great universities' open, free, online content, as academic standards, for future credit and degree courses. World University and School is like Wikipedia with MIT Open Courseware, Berkeley Webcast, Harvard's open courses, Yale OYC, Stanford's Engineering Everywhere (SEE), and other great open course ware, where people-to-people teaching and learning take place especially in video, and in interactive worlds like Second Life and Open Simulator. In this Berkman Center academic fellowship, I would like to work closely, in particular, with other Berkman Fellows, Harvard and MIT faculty, and others, to come into conversation about WUaS in relation to their projects, to build both a rich community, as well as robust and generative information technologies, to generate new academic conversations, and to facilitate in making learning and teaching very enjoyable.
In the next year, in conversation with other Berkman Fellows, WUaS would like to develop approaches to each of the following main areas.
- On the Courses' page, WUaS would like to find, aggregate and curate further great, open, course ware, as well as network WUaS with great universities vis-a-vis their open, online, educational resources, to become a kind of meta-directory. WUaS envisions cameras in classrooms of great universities for ongoing, interactive course-material.
- On the open Subjects' page, WUaS would like to develop information technologies that combine, for example, new MIT OCW, and Berkeley Webcast, courses with already existing subjects and other great open course ware as it emerges. This subjects' page will become the basis for academic course work beginning in 2014, while remaining open to anyone to add a new subject.
- On the Languages' (all 3,000-8,000) page, where each language becomes its own school, with some degree-granting in some languages, WUaS would like 1) to plan for and develop a Universal Translator Project, building on Google Translate, for all 3,000-8,000 languages. In developing schools in each language, the English WUaS is the basis for a new university and school in any new language (Wikipedia by way of comparison has around 272 languages), and translation of the English WUaS's section headings on all main pages (e.g. Courses, Subjects, etc.) is the first step for starting each of these schools. WUaS would like 2) to find translators for this, and build community in other languages, perhaps by networking with Wikipedians to start. WUaS would like 3) not only to facilitate free, open, language learning (people-to-people, too), by linking language learning opportunities, and make easy such possibilities for people speaking other languages to do this in virtual worlds. In generating all these language resources, WUaS would like to 4) generate an archive of teaching and learning resources in all languages, even over millennia.
- On the Library Resources' page, WUaS would like to link, aggregate, curate, and perhaps network, great libraries with significant, open, online resources.
- On the Nation-States' page, WUaS would like to, working with OLPC, facilitate teaching and learning materials that are legal in any given country, and that meet accreditation standards there, as well as facilitate open teaching and learning. WUaS would also like to explore starting law schools in possibly 50-100 countries in virtual worlds like Second Life, perhaps working with the Harvard Law School for this.
- On the Research page, WUaS, as wiki, would like to facilitate open, scientific, and other research projects, engaging the strengths of the internet at a budding, research university. WUaS would like to facilitate finding subjects, populations and samples for online research, studies and experiments. WUaS will also come into conversation with the WUaS Medical School, particularly neuroscience, brain and language research, to develop its research agenda. By generating an all-language database to facilitate translation technologies in all possible language combinations (see 'Languages' above), WUaS's 'Research' will become a rich resource for brain and language research on end-users, potentially using, for example, neural 'hats' in the home for research.
- On the You at World University page, WUaS would like to find a way to reach and connect with great students in the developing world and everywhere who want to learn, and let them know about imminent degree-possibilities. You at World University will also facilitate ways of students staying united and learning together. And You at World University will be the basis for a 'Secure Registrar' (httpS://...) for grading. WUaS aspires to be a great university, producing neuroscientists, and will engage grading in degree programs for assessment purposes.
- On the free Educational Software page, WUaS will continue to aggregate free, great software, as people add it and WUaS finds it. As an online university with a computer science focus, WUaS would also like to build and generate robust and innovative software.
- On the Museums' page, WUaS would like to link all museums with significant online content, in all languages, and perhaps generate ways to visit such collections in virtual worlds, for educational purposes.
- On the Hardware Resource Possibilities' page, WUaS will continue to wiki-add lowest cost, highest quality hardware which it learns of, informed by OLPC and innovative approaches to low cost, computer, hardware generation.
- On the World University and School Foundation's page, WUaS will facilitate WUaS as an organization and a focus for the generation of financial resources, for the ongoing development of this university and school.
There are between 1.3 and 2 billion people in the world with computers, and possibly another 3 billion people with mobile telephones and internet devices (Palfrey 2010). WUaS would like to reach all, in around 7,000 languages and in about 220 countries and territories, via this wiki. In addition to these wiki learning opportunities, World University and School's teaching and learning wikis are a rationale for further wiring the whole world - part of WUaS's mission - thus helping to facilitate open, worldwide teaching and learning.
For all this, WUaS seeks to build a special team for collaboration and planning. Not only does WUaS seek to plan to collaborate with great universities around the world, such as Harvard, for open, online content, degree-granting, and even faculty buy-in, but WUaS would also like to generate networks between great universities around the world. World University and School's mission, with its web focus, to engage great universities will generate new networks, academic conversations and information technologies, as well as, importantly, academic and knowledge-production jobs. And this Berkman Fellowship is a remarkable opportunity for such collaboration.
This far-reaching vision for an open World University enables people around the world to teach, shape the WUaS wiki, and learn, potentially in all languages and countries. In seeking, potentially, a long term, collaborative relationship with the Berkman Center and Harvard, via this academic fellowship, WUaS would like to collaborate with networks of excellence vis-a-vis the internet to open learning to help many people, and thus help instantiate, in information technologies, the Berkman Center's vision of the University and Cyberspace.
(See also the related: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tidepool-personal-statement-vis-vis.html - November 15, 2010)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sand-patterns-world-university-and.html - November 16, 2010)
I propose World University and School, as a Harvard Berkman Center Academic Fellowship 2011-2012 project, to not only engage the Berkman Center's mission “to build out into cyberspace” to learn about it, but to facilitate, educationally, an open, teaching and learning wiki, for people-to-people, and highest quality, educational content, and conversations. Through an open, free-to-students, “wiki” (editable web pages) in all languages, nation-states and subjects, and at all levels, with a particular focus on great universities' open educational resources, World University and School would like to generate, particularly, a new, complementary conversation in the university, broadly conceived, engaging generative information technologies, and, especially, through collaborating with a remarkable group of Berkman Fellows and Harvard faculty. World University and School (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com), which I've been developing for about 3 years, also would like to complement the Berkman Center's focus on becoming a meta-player in University and Cyberspace, particularly building on the Berkman Center's conference in Torino (especially Nesson, Gasser, Shieber, Palfrey and Fisher talks) this June 28th-30th, 2010. In the upcoming, academic fellowship year, I'd like specifically to build a community of Universitians, develop robust wiki, and other related, information technologies, as well as further approaches to resource building, in the following areas.
In outline, World University and School (WUaS) is unique among open, online university projects (most of which WUaS lists on its 'Courses' page) because, as a whole, WUaS is mission-focused, it is wiki, it is planning to be in all 3000-8000 languages, it is planning to offer online B.A., Law, M.D., and Ph.D. degrees with matriculating classes beginning in 2014. WUaS has also begun the outline of a number of schools, for example, both Law and Medical School pages, as well as a Music School, etc. And, lastly, while course-centric (you can teach any course you would like to, to your web camera or in a virtual world and link it to WUaS), WUaS also focuses aggregating content and facilitating open teaching and learning on the following main pages: courses, subjects, languages, nation states, research, library resources, museums, educational software, you at world university, hardware resource possibilities, and a foundation. WUaS also focuses on collaborating with great universities' open, free, online content, as academic standards, for future credit and degree courses. World University and School is like Wikipedia with MIT Open Courseware, Berkeley Webcast, Harvard's open courses, Yale OYC, Stanford's Engineering Everywhere (SEE), and other great open course ware, where people-to-people teaching and learning take place especially in video, and in interactive worlds like Second Life and Open Simulator. In this Berkman Center academic fellowship, I would like to work closely, in particular, with other Berkman Fellows, Harvard and MIT faculty, and others, to come into conversation about WUaS in relation to their projects, to build both a rich community, as well as robust and generative information technologies, to generate new academic conversations, and to facilitate in making learning and teaching very enjoyable.
In the next year, in conversation with other Berkman Fellows, WUaS would like to develop approaches to each of the following main areas.
- On the Courses' page, WUaS would like to find, aggregate and curate further great, open, course ware, as well as network WUaS with great universities vis-a-vis their open, online, educational resources, to become a kind of meta-directory. WUaS envisions cameras in classrooms of great universities for ongoing, interactive course-material.
- On the open Subjects' page, WUaS would like to develop information technologies that combine, for example, new MIT OCW, and Berkeley Webcast, courses with already existing subjects and other great open course ware as it emerges. This subjects' page will become the basis for academic course work beginning in 2014, while remaining open to anyone to add a new subject.
- On the Languages' (all 3,000-8,000) page, where each language becomes its own school, with some degree-granting in some languages, WUaS would like 1) to plan for and develop a Universal Translator Project, building on Google Translate, for all 3,000-8,000 languages. In developing schools in each language, the English WUaS is the basis for a new university and school in any new language (Wikipedia by way of comparison has around 272 languages), and translation of the English WUaS's section headings on all main pages (e.g. Courses, Subjects, etc.) is the first step for starting each of these schools. WUaS would like 2) to find translators for this, and build community in other languages, perhaps by networking with Wikipedians to start. WUaS would like 3) not only to facilitate free, open, language learning (people-to-people, too), by linking language learning opportunities, and make easy such possibilities for people speaking other languages to do this in virtual worlds. In generating all these language resources, WUaS would like to 4) generate an archive of teaching and learning resources in all languages, even over millennia.
- On the Library Resources' page, WUaS would like to link, aggregate, curate, and perhaps network, great libraries with significant, open, online resources.
- On the Nation-States' page, WUaS would like to, working with OLPC, facilitate teaching and learning materials that are legal in any given country, and that meet accreditation standards there, as well as facilitate open teaching and learning. WUaS would also like to explore starting law schools in possibly 50-100 countries in virtual worlds like Second Life, perhaps working with the Harvard Law School for this.
- On the Research page, WUaS, as wiki, would like to facilitate open, scientific, and other research projects, engaging the strengths of the internet at a budding, research university. WUaS would like to facilitate finding subjects, populations and samples for online research, studies and experiments. WUaS will also come into conversation with the WUaS Medical School, particularly neuroscience, brain and language research, to develop its research agenda. By generating an all-language database to facilitate translation technologies in all possible language combinations (see 'Languages' above), WUaS's 'Research' will become a rich resource for brain and language research on end-users, potentially using, for example, neural 'hats' in the home for research.
- On the You at World University page, WUaS would like to find a way to reach and connect with great students in the developing world and everywhere who want to learn, and let them know about imminent degree-possibilities. You at World University will also facilitate ways of students staying united and learning together. And You at World University will be the basis for a 'Secure Registrar' (httpS://...) for grading. WUaS aspires to be a great university, producing neuroscientists, and will engage grading in degree programs for assessment purposes.
- On the free Educational Software page, WUaS will continue to aggregate free, great software, as people add it and WUaS finds it. As an online university with a computer science focus, WUaS would also like to build and generate robust and innovative software.
- On the Museums' page, WUaS would like to link all museums with significant online content, in all languages, and perhaps generate ways to visit such collections in virtual worlds, for educational purposes.
- On the Hardware Resource Possibilities' page, WUaS will continue to wiki-add lowest cost, highest quality hardware which it learns of, informed by OLPC and innovative approaches to low cost, computer, hardware generation.
- On the World University and School Foundation's page, WUaS will facilitate WUaS as an organization and a focus for the generation of financial resources, for the ongoing development of this university and school.
There are between 1.3 and 2 billion people in the world with computers, and possibly another 3 billion people with mobile telephones and internet devices (Palfrey 2010). WUaS would like to reach all, in around 7,000 languages and in about 220 countries and territories, via this wiki. In addition to these wiki learning opportunities, World University and School's teaching and learning wikis are a rationale for further wiring the whole world - part of WUaS's mission - thus helping to facilitate open, worldwide teaching and learning.
For all this, WUaS seeks to build a special team for collaboration and planning. Not only does WUaS seek to plan to collaborate with great universities around the world, such as Harvard, for open, online content, degree-granting, and even faculty buy-in, but WUaS would also like to generate networks between great universities around the world. World University and School's mission, with its web focus, to engage great universities will generate new networks, academic conversations and information technologies, as well as, importantly, academic and knowledge-production jobs. And this Berkman Fellowship is a remarkable opportunity for such collaboration.
This far-reaching vision for an open World University enables people around the world to teach, shape the WUaS wiki, and learn, potentially in all languages and countries. In seeking, potentially, a long term, collaborative relationship with the Berkman Center and Harvard, via this academic fellowship, WUaS would like to collaborate with networks of excellence vis-a-vis the internet to open learning to help many people, and thus help instantiate, in information technologies, the Berkman Center's vision of the University and Cyberspace.
(See also the related: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tidepool-personal-statement-vis-vis.html - November 15, 2010)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sand-patterns-world-university-and.html - November 16, 2010)
Monday, November 15, 2010
Tidepool: Personal Statement vis-a-vis World University and School
Personal Statement
I'm presently developing World University and School (WUaS), a global, virtual, open, free-to-students, multilingual (future credit- and degree-granting) university and school, which is like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware. WUaS is planned in all languages, all subjects, all nation states, and at all levels, and as an archive. Teach, learn or add a course at this open wiki. With your web camera, post something you'd like to teach to youtube.com, for example, and link it to WUaS. Interactivity happens in virtual worlds like Second Life. It's for the developing world (especially One Laptop per Child countries) and everyone - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com. It's a fascinating project. How to generate a Universitian community, and scale WUaS, are questions I'm presently focusing on. How, too, to work in concert with great universities' academic conversations, to complement and enhance highest-quality research, teaching and learning, by engaging the openness of the internet, its inclusivity, and the potential to generate new information technologies?
Academically, I study and teach about the internet, anthropologically and sociologically, having taught an “Information Technology and Society” course on Harvard's Berkman Island in Second Life for about 3 years now - http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/ – both in group text chat, and in voice, as well as this course and others, in other universities. I've written about information technologies and their social effects in a chapter in the field of Tourism Studies entitled “Digital Spatial Representations: New Communication Processes and 'Middle Eastern' UNESCO World Heritage Sites Online” (2006), which I began while studying at U.C. Berkeley in 2000-2001, and in an unpublished, ethnological paper, entitled “Physical and Online St. Kilda: A Comparison of ‘Senses of Place’” (2004), about visiting online St. Kilda island as a nascent, virtual place, while at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2003-2004, focusing on networks shaped by the internet as well as UNESCO world heritage as a network. I'm presently writing an ethnography of Harbin Hot Springs, with a virtual world aspect. I plan to create, in a virtual world, an interactive, online Harbin as ethnographic field site, comparable to on-the-ground Harbin, for anthropological research. Anthropological questions about ways in which the actual and virtual relate, and how to conceive of the virtual, as well as conduct research about it, are key themes in my academic writing career.
I'm a main aggregator, curator and editor of Webnographers.org - http://webnographers.org - a wiki bibliography for virtual ethnography.
On weekends, I play in the Prince Charles' Pipe Band in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I also blog daily about a variety of these subjects including World University and School - click on the 'global university' label - here: http://www.scott-macleod.blogspot.com. I also write poetry, which you'll find in my blog.
Much of my academic work, unpublished papers, references, courses, media, video lectures, World University and School, and even some poetry and theater, can be found on my 'Papers' page at http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm.
My personal homepage says much of the above in a different way: http://www.scottmacleod.com.
(See also the related: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sand-patterns-world-university-and.html - November 16, 2010)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tidepool-personal-statement-vis-vis.html - November 15, 2010)
I'm presently developing World University and School (WUaS), a global, virtual, open, free-to-students, multilingual (future credit- and degree-granting) university and school, which is like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware. WUaS is planned in all languages, all subjects, all nation states, and at all levels, and as an archive. Teach, learn or add a course at this open wiki. With your web camera, post something you'd like to teach to youtube.com, for example, and link it to WUaS. Interactivity happens in virtual worlds like Second Life. It's for the developing world (especially One Laptop per Child countries) and everyone - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com. It's a fascinating project. How to generate a Universitian community, and scale WUaS, are questions I'm presently focusing on. How, too, to work in concert with great universities' academic conversations, to complement and enhance highest-quality research, teaching and learning, by engaging the openness of the internet, its inclusivity, and the potential to generate new information technologies?
Academically, I study and teach about the internet, anthropologically and sociologically, having taught an “Information Technology and Society” course on Harvard's Berkman Island in Second Life for about 3 years now - http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/ – both in group text chat, and in voice, as well as this course and others, in other universities. I've written about information technologies and their social effects in a chapter in the field of Tourism Studies entitled “Digital Spatial Representations: New Communication Processes and 'Middle Eastern' UNESCO World Heritage Sites Online” (2006), which I began while studying at U.C. Berkeley in 2000-2001, and in an unpublished, ethnological paper, entitled “Physical and Online St. Kilda: A Comparison of ‘Senses of Place’” (2004), about visiting online St. Kilda island as a nascent, virtual place, while at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2003-2004, focusing on networks shaped by the internet as well as UNESCO world heritage as a network. I'm presently writing an ethnography of Harbin Hot Springs, with a virtual world aspect. I plan to create, in a virtual world, an interactive, online Harbin as ethnographic field site, comparable to on-the-ground Harbin, for anthropological research. Anthropological questions about ways in which the actual and virtual relate, and how to conceive of the virtual, as well as conduct research about it, are key themes in my academic writing career.
I'm a main aggregator, curator and editor of Webnographers.org - http://webnographers.org - a wiki bibliography for virtual ethnography.
On weekends, I play in the Prince Charles' Pipe Band in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I also blog daily about a variety of these subjects including World University and School - click on the 'global university' label - here: http://www.scott-macleod.blogspot.com. I also write poetry, which you'll find in my blog.
Much of my academic work, unpublished papers, references, courses, media, video lectures, World University and School, and even some poetry and theater, can be found on my 'Papers' page at http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm.
My personal homepage says much of the above in a different way: http://www.scottmacleod.com.
(See also the related: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sand-patterns-world-university-and.html - November 16, 2010)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tidepool-personal-statement-vis-vis.html - November 15, 2010)
Tide pool bubbles: The little things in the Harbin pools, A kind of Harbin cultural code, Comfortable, open, and relaxed with each other
Harbin ethnography:
... Disagreements and differences about such will potentially be understood in relation to actual Harbin and its waters, as kinds of grounding assumptions (Boellstorff 2008:65) and especially as {counter}cultural codes.
The little things in the Harbin pools – both actual and virtual – fascinate me, as ethnographer, informing a kind of Harbin, cultural code. As method I take the anthropological approach of engagement with people, place and milieu for learning's sake, via the methods of field work and participant observation, FURTHER, via the methods of 'pool play' and immersion, literally and virtually, into Harbin's waters. Harbin's 'fluid codes' find expression in its waters in ways that invites people – Harbin residents and visitors – to become comfortable, open, relaxed, and sometimes intimate, in the pools and with each other, which can then lead to further explorations of openness. As roots of the Harbin experience, the logic of these countercultural codes are further informed by what happens in the oneness of the moment in the pools – which seem to bring people 'there,' even 'virtually' - emerging loosely out of hippie explorations from the 1960s. In this actual / virtual ethnography, I examine ways in which implications of the 'virtual,' as concept, are not only in the digital - in virtual Harbin, for example - but in the immersion of experience, here mediated by both actual and virtual Harbins. The Harbin community, its oneness, and then, what Ishvara has called the Kundalini experience (Ishvara 2002) vis-a-vis, may find new forms in virtual worlds. These countercultural codes, as roots, which logics involve being at Harbin in the now, now potentially virtually and digitally, are given new form in anthropological explorations of immersion, now in relation to multimedia virtual worlds. Virtual Harbin thus, for example, rewrites anthropological and ethnographic methods in new ways to engage both multimedia-virtuality – where representations are at a physical and actual distance from the end-user – on the screen - focusing immersively on the little things, as well as on actual Harbin virtuality, drawing on a myriad of actual, Harbin experiences (e.g. of oneness in the pools) since 1972, to inform complementary methods.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
As method, I engage ethnographic processes as main, ongoing approaches to data gathering at both actual Harbin, and in virtual Harbin. Ethnography here is both an interpretive practice and a body of social scientific writings (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007). ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tide-pool-bubbles-little-things-in.html - November 15, 2010)
... Disagreements and differences about such will potentially be understood in relation to actual Harbin and its waters, as kinds of grounding assumptions (Boellstorff 2008:65) and especially as {counter}cultural codes.
The little things in the Harbin pools – both actual and virtual – fascinate me, as ethnographer, informing a kind of Harbin, cultural code. As method I take the anthropological approach of engagement with people, place and milieu for learning's sake, via the methods of field work and participant observation, FURTHER, via the methods of 'pool play' and immersion, literally and virtually, into Harbin's waters. Harbin's 'fluid codes' find expression in its waters in ways that invites people – Harbin residents and visitors – to become comfortable, open, relaxed, and sometimes intimate, in the pools and with each other, which can then lead to further explorations of openness. As roots of the Harbin experience, the logic of these countercultural codes are further informed by what happens in the oneness of the moment in the pools – which seem to bring people 'there,' even 'virtually' - emerging loosely out of hippie explorations from the 1960s. In this actual / virtual ethnography, I examine ways in which implications of the 'virtual,' as concept, are not only in the digital - in virtual Harbin, for example - but in the immersion of experience, here mediated by both actual and virtual Harbins. The Harbin community, its oneness, and then, what Ishvara has called the Kundalini experience (Ishvara 2002) vis-a-vis, may find new forms in virtual worlds. These countercultural codes, as roots, which logics involve being at Harbin in the now, now potentially virtually and digitally, are given new form in anthropological explorations of immersion, now in relation to multimedia virtual worlds. Virtual Harbin thus, for example, rewrites anthropological and ethnographic methods in new ways to engage both multimedia-virtuality – where representations are at a physical and actual distance from the end-user – on the screen - focusing immersively on the little things, as well as on actual Harbin virtuality, drawing on a myriad of actual, Harbin experiences (e.g. of oneness in the pools) since 1972, to inform complementary methods.
ETHNOGRAPHY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
As method, I engage ethnographic processes as main, ongoing approaches to data gathering at both actual Harbin, and in virtual Harbin. Ethnography here is both an interpretive practice and a body of social scientific writings (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007). ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/tide-pool-bubbles-little-things-in.html - November 15, 2010)
New crab species: Added many GREAT universities' YouTube.com channels to World Univ & Sch, Open SUBJECTS, How can an open school be fun for you?
Added many GREAT universities' YouTube.com channels to World Univ & Sch - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings ...
There are SO MANY Open Educational Resources here, and they will probably GROW immensely ...
and we have an ABUNDANCE of Teaching and Learning resources on the web ... Enjoy :)
*
Here are the SUBJECTS with new courses at World Univ & Sch (mostly MIT OCW, today): http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WikiActivity ... there's so much at WUaS and MIT OCW already ... And World University and School has open subjects, and fascinating ones, as well :)
*
How can an open, online university and school be of use to, or fun for, you? ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ ... teach, learn, add anything ... it's like Wikipedia with MIT OCW and other great open course ware ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-crab-species-added-many-great.html - November 15, 2010)
There are SO MANY Open Educational Resources here, and they will probably GROW immensely ...
and we have an ABUNDANCE of Teaching and Learning resources on the web ... Enjoy :)
*
Here are the SUBJECTS with new courses at World Univ & Sch (mostly MIT OCW, today): http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WikiActivity ... there's so much at WUaS and MIT OCW already ... And World University and School has open subjects, and fascinating ones, as well :)
*
How can an open, online university and school be of use to, or fun for, you? ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ ... teach, learn, add anything ... it's like Wikipedia with MIT OCW and other great open course ware ...
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-crab-species-added-many-great.html - November 15, 2010)
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Glacier Melt: A lot of sea level rise, 'As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas,' WUaS Ocean and Climate Change Management Plan, 350.org
This is a lot of sea level rise - NYT's article 'As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas' by Justin Gillis (November 13, 2010) -http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/science/earth/14ice.html - three feet is one best estimate over the next 100 years.
I added this article to World University & School's 'Ocean and Climate Change Management Plan' subject ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Ocean_%26_Climate_Management_Plan
*
What to do?
Here's a solution:http://350.org?
"350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere."
http://www.350.org/en/about/science
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/glacier-melt-lot-of-sea-level-rise-as.html - November 14, 2010)
I added this article to World University & School's 'Ocean and Climate Change Management Plan' subject ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Ocean_%26_Climate_Management_Plan
*
What to do?
Here's a solution:http://350.org?
"350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere."
http://www.350.org/en/about/science
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/glacier-melt-lot-of-sea-level-rise-as.html - November 14, 2010)
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Sun close up: For a fascinating video overview on Energy and Global Warming, check out Nobel laureate Rick Smalley's talk at Columbia University
For a fascinating video overview on Energy and Global Warming, check out Nobel laureate Rick Smalley's talk at Columbia University (part way down this page) - http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/cool-climate-film-takes-on-truth/. You'll also find this at World University and School's Ocean and Climage Management Plan: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Ocean_%26_Climate_Management_Plan
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sun-close-up-for-fascinating-video.html - November 12, 2010)
(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/11/sun-close-up-for-fascinating-video.html - November 12, 2010)