July 2006 Archives
Soon, a new Yo La Tengo album and tour! I still love this band so much and hope to be in the right place at the right time for their tour. The album's called I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. Matador has made the first single available, "Pass the Hatchet" -- a really nice mix of all eras of Yo La... not super soft, a little dark, not silky, nicely groovy. Yo La Tengo: yay!
After reading my lament about not knowing what I wrote a year ago when I moved to New Haven, Tom Carden sent me a year of Girlwonder from Bloglines. Thank you so much, Tom!
So this is what I wrote while I was flying to New Haven. And this is my post from July 26, 2005, 4:32 p.m:
I'm somewhere over the western third of the United States, on my way to Chicago. It's hard to believe that I boarded the plane this morning at 6:20 a.m. that would take me away from the San Francisco I love so much. But this is where the transition starts, where the next part of my life begins to happen.
Maybe I mentioned it elsewhere, but I never really said goodbye to SF before when I left it. I've left twice before: first, I went to Munich, and thereafter Chicago, and then in 2003, I went to Italy. I may have known I'd be back. Okay, I'll be back because it became my home, because I love it.
But this time, I took care to say farewell. Yesterday, I went to Ritual for the last time, where one of the owners, Eileen declared it was drink-all-the-coffee-you-can day (I finished two beautiful medium lattes and a double macchiato -- I exuded caffeine out of my pores the rest of the day). I had meetings at Six Apart for the freelance work I've been doing with the company, and had beers with Jay. When I went home to pack up, Angie, Anita and Jeremiah (who will be a schoolmate in a couple weeks) came by, as Bryce entertained my now former upstairs neighbors and two future, potential roommates).
That was just today. There was another amazing going-away party -- John hosted it on Saturday night. We enjoyed
food, company and soft, lovely twilight. There were shared tables at Ritual with my new buddies there, hoisted glasses at the Latin American Club, daily wanderings through the Mission, voyages downtown and to the Lower Haight.
This all feels grounded (despite the fact that I couldn't sleep last night -- I had to get up at 4 to go to the airport),
than other moves I've done. As I started writing this post, I was listening to Postal Service sing "Brand New Colony
"Everything will change." It brings tears to my eyes, it makes me feel big and small at the same time. A new part of my life begins right now. I loved the old part of my life, too, and I can't yet imagine what this new one brings. I can't quite believe it's finally here.
On July 26, 2005 I pulled my suitcase out the door of the flat at 24th and Guerrero for the last time. The cab rushed me off to San Francisco International Airport early in the morning. With that, I began my move to New Haven and began my leaving of San Francisco.
I expected to be back more this year, but instead I only spent three days there in December. The entire 12 years I've orbited the city, I've never spent so much time away from it. Now, looking at pictures of friends who've recently landed there, I miss the light and air, I miss people I lost touch with a few years ago.
I wish I could link to what I wrote about it a year ago, but Girlwonder's archives aren't back online. So I don't recall exactly what I thought, just that I knew everything would change. The changes have been wonderful and my life rich. I'm doing things I wouldn't have imagined a year ago, whether in my research, with the person I want to spend my life with, or my summer research in Bangalore. I needed to take on the next part of my life for these things to happen.
And yet, I miss everything about SF. It kills me to be away sometimes and I don't know that I'll ever have the chance to be back.
Off this weekend to see something of India! A group of us is going to Hampi. Built in 1336, Hampi became a flourishing city and trading community, boasting a population of 500,000 at its height. In 1565, a series of Deccan raids brought the city to its knees, destroying Hampi's temples and markets. From the photos I've seen, it should be wonderful. Until a few months ago, it was a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is no longer, which is of concern--how will it be treated?
It'll also be the first time I've left Bangalore since I arrived! With the exception of the school year, I don't usually stay in one place this much, particularly if I'm in a foreign country. I'm excited for the travel.
More Monday ...
Berlin has opened a DDR Museum: a museum of East Germany. It's right next to the Palastruine, the ruins of the Palast der Republik. A perfect location, and easier to get to than the Documentation Center of GDR Everyday Culture (Dokumentationszentrum Alltagskultur der DDR) on the Polish border.
The New York Times gives a favorable review, saying it focuses on items of everyday life but also the negative things that surrounded them. For example, there is a replica of a DDR apartment that is also bugged. (Visitors can hear the conversations thanks to the sensitive microphones placed).
I'm happy to hear the museum is taking the approach of displaying the everyday. This includes exhibitions on things like East Germany's love for naked sunbathing, but also product and object biographies. Says the Times:
The museum’s display — 600 objects will be on view at any given time — maintains a balance between the political and the everyday. It portrays the Trabant, for example, the little car that was the epitome of East German consumerism, with a sort of wry affection. It was no Mercedes or BMW, surely, but the unpretentious and serviceable Trabant got people around in East Germany, and they appreciated it.
The red telephone sitting on a table in the living room comes with a recording: “You won’t believe it, but I have a telephone!” a man says, reflecting the fact that it often took a couple of years or longer for East Germans to get one.
The telephone example demonstrates the museum's approach. When I was writing about Ostalgie (nostalgia for things East German), which was my thesis topic till this spring, it seemed the only fair way to stop fetishizing the GDR was to focus on the everyday, to explore the biographies of the objects without being judgmental, to do so in the voices of GDR residents.
I wish I were going to be in Berlin again soon. I spent six months researching GDR objects and design culture. It's nice to see them in an open forum.
UPDATE: Indeed, logging on from home, we can't get to individual Blogspot pages.
In response to Melissa's comment, it's not just people in the tech community but particularly bloggers because they have a means of publication and voice in their own hands: they are media participants. It's not a matter of making people feel safe, but cutting off a means of organization and network for the people they believe are behind the bombings. What's at issue here are two things: 1) censorship and 2) a heavy-handed and rather uneducated approach to the ban-- where the Indian government says there's a problem with 12 radical sites (demanding its people explain why they need to view these sites), not realizing or caring that these sites are platforms that power millions of blogs, most of which have nothing to do with organizing attacks, or even India. Comments on some blogs liken it to analogies like this: "terrorists drink water--let's cut off the water supply for everyone." I might say it's like blowing up the house to kill the cockroach.
Via my colleague Udai and Boingboing:
In the wake of last week's attacks in Mumbai and reports that the Students Islamic Movement of India (which is believed to have been involved in the attacks) uses blogs to coordinate, it appears the Indian Department of Telecommunications has issued directives to ISPs to block access to twelve sites. Among these sites are major blog platforms and hosting services, including Blogspot, Typepad and Geocities.The ISPs following the block include the most major telco conglomerates like TATA and Airtel. (There doesn't seem to be a ban at our offices. But in our flat, our ISP is Airtel. I'll check tonight and see what I find.)
Reports the Hindustan Times:
Officials defended the decision saying, "We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites."
The problem's been coming to light since the weekend. Dina Mehta and a number of others have posted about it on their respective blogs. Jace gives a good description of the situation, According to Jace, CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team-India) is the only body that can block websites but the DoT routinely hands off lists of URLs to block. There are comments on some of these blogs stating that it's an "operation" and all will be back to normal by the 19th. But finding out information hasn't been easy -- a CERT official, once reached, was not exactly polite to one blogger.
Finally I managed to get through to Dr Gulshan Rai. He was downright rude. He said he couldn’t understand what my problem was, and in any case he could not solve it on phone.
Me: “So should I send you an email?”
Gulshan Rai: “Do whatever.”
So that’s that for now.
Information about the ban is being culled on one hand by bloggers, who update information on the Bloggers Against Censorship wiki-- this includes ISPs blocking sites, workarounds, press coverage, blogs protesting the ban. (Some bloggers in India may be getting kicked off these wikis).
Particularly interesting to me is the fact that the ban (or "blackout," or "operation") is not affecting all of India, but apparently, just urban areas. People outside cities aren't necessarily experiencing these blocks; one source says certain rural areas are not included.
Very sad that India is conducting such a blanket ban without considering that these "12 sites" might power millions of blogs. Even if this "operation" ends soon, what is the aftermath?
In reading Matt Webb's presentation at We Love Technology, I was struck by one of his side notes: his comment about missed television. He said,
My experience of missed-TV has become a social one. Even if someone doesn’t have the programme I’m after, we have an excuse to talk. It’s engaging because it taps into something which is already engaging: being social and hanging out with my friends.
Though we don't usually design for missing, we innovate uses of things for missing... because missing affords different kinds of interactions. Missing a TV show means that Matt loses one interaction (with a television program) but gains another social one,
Or sometimes, when I call someone's number, I specifically intend to miss them and leave a message. Haven't you ever called someone with the intention of missing them, only to catch them? "Oh! I'm sorry -- I just wanted to reach your voice mail."
Many people, especially in places where mobile calls are expensive, call someone with the intention that the recipient not pick up. Missed calls, beeping, or flashing all refer to communicating to someone that you have called or that you want them to call you. Jonathan Donner, who I am working with, writes about how this functions in Rwanda. It's sometimes a complex dance as the less affluent person tries to get the more affluent person to pick up the call.
Every alternative weekly -- and of course, Craig's List, has an exciting business based on the missed connection. I was the lucky recipient of one once when I was on the cover of the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook section for a flash mob I took part in. A friend forwarded me the note listing. I had a boyfriend at the time but had a beer with the guy anyway (he later turned out to be friends with another friend. SF is small.)
A side note about Matt Webb: some of my favorite conversations over the last few years have been with Mr. Webb. He's one of the most thoughtful people I know. I'm reminded of the moment at Design Engaged 2004 when I got stuck at the other end of a long table in a boring conversation. I disengaged myself and went down to Matt's end of the table. "Oh, I'm glad you joined us," Matt said, "We were just talking about the nature of good and evil."
And then, we had a long, thoughtful conversation about just that.
Aditya announced we should all hit the dance floor before things shut down for the evening. Police cracked down recently on dancing in Bangalore, so it seemed like a good idea. That's me; Carolyn snapped the picture.
I was merely a passenger, not a driver. So I captured some Saturday afternoon traffic.
It's Friday, the end of my second work week (and my ninth day) in Bangalore. When I got sick on Sunday and then the bombings in Mumbai happened, I didn't update the way that I otherwise might have. Not a surprise... that's what happens when you're busy being somewhere. So let me cover a few highlights.
Last Friday, Archana invited me over to her flat for a get-together with some of her friends. Archana seems to be the connector to many things and people: her friends were just one hop away from projects or people I knew. Not surprisingly, she knows Jasmeen, who I'd been keen to meet (and had drafted an unsent email to her shortly before I left the US). She is a founder of the Blank Noise Project, which raises awareness about eve-teasing (the Indian term for harassment of women) through installations, happenings and events. She's enjoyed a fair bit of press and media buzz around her work, which is how I had heard of her in the US.
Jasmeen's boyfriend, whose name I'm afraid I don't know how to spell, is doing work in Processing on hydrology and sound. (He also lived in San Francisco). Of course, he knows of William Martin, one of my friends from Yale, who used Processing for acoustic modeling. Other friends joined as the evening went on, including Udai, an MSR researcher who works on a multimouse computer system for educational settings in developing and emerging economies. From Archana's comfortable flat, we went for biryani, and then milkshakes (I had a rose-flavored one: refreshing!). Everything shuts down early in Bangalore, thanks to a recent police crackdown, and we all had early Saturday mornings.
On Wednesday, I met the person John Thackara, Heather and danah told me to meet: Aditya dev Sood. He runs the Center for Knowledge Societies, an interaction design and ethnography practice focusing on emerging markets (India in particular) and technologies (primarily the mobile). He seems to know many people I do and travel in the same broad circles. Plus, he studied architecture and is now completing his Ph.d. in anthropology. No shortage of conversation topics there.
Last night, I saw Aparna Rao. She is a Bangalore native who graduated from Ivrea in 2004. I've always liked her work. It's beautiful with lots of attention to detail, but it's provocative as well. Her Uncle Phone is one outstanding example. We caught up about people but more importantly, about life.
I'm not even mentioning the community in my flat, with Carolyn, Asha, Satiya, and Paul. That's been outstanding. Last weekend's shopping, going out excursions, and in-flat conversations were various permutations of us. It's nice to have a comfortable home situation here.
Tonight, a reception for an architecture office. Tomorrow, a short film festival. The people I've met are turning me onto the design scene in Bangalore, which is exciting. I'm wondering where I might pitch an article about contemporary design here. All in all, I've been happy to reconnect with, meet and get to know people who have these interests. It's an exciting view of the town.
Mike posts about attempting to invite women to Sketching 06, the hardware prototyping conference he put on a few weeks ago. Though he made an attempt to invite women outside of his personal network, only one of 30 women invitees outside his network was able to attend. Rather than answering on his site, I wanted to muse on it here for two reasons--he and I have already had extensive conversations about this (he alludes to the feedback I've shared in his post).
The issue Mike raises is akin to several other conversations going on in different places: the Women in Architecture group at Yale School of Architecture, on the Institute of Distributed Creativity list, in a conversation I've had with Peter about IDEA 2006 and his frustrations with the usual suspects at conferences, and a piece I'm working on about women seeming to disappear from Web 2.0, at least on a leadership level. Why don't women attend, speak up, take positions of leadership? How do you go outside of who you know to create something new?
Here's an analogy. Say you're inviting a wedding. You'd like to have 90 people there with a good mix of the bride and the groom's nearest and dearest. You'd even like it to be 50/50. But as it happens, the groom's family lives in Sydney and the wedding is in San Francisco. You would probably have to invite more of the groom's side in order to reach 50/50, given that it's far away. As you created the invitation list, you might stack the groom's A, B and C lists with more people than the bride, figuring that you'd need to invite more. Beyond that, though, it's not a huge wedding. You don't merely want to hit a number. There are other criteria. You don't want to invite people who feel too foreign, who behave badly at weddings, who are awkward, who you don't talk to anymore.
Essentially, there are two things at stake. One is a numbers game. There needs to be more people on the list. Keep a big list of women who do what you do. Anne Galloway keeps such a list as a resource to our broader communities. If yours is more specific, gather it and publish it. Consider people you haven't heard as a speaker but whose work you admire. The same people tend to speak because they're in the loop or they self-promote. There are many other people whose names aren't on lists, who aren't speaking because they're shy, they're working, they don't work at the main institutions. Shake the tree. Ask professors, managers. Look at bibliographies and footnotes. Pull in people in fields similar but not the same as yours. Don't stop with gender: consider race as well. Dolores Hayden recently pointed out to the Yale Women in Architecture group that if you're creating a list of women in leadership positions in architecture for future juries, studios and speakers, also create a list of people of color. Cultivate your lists alive and actually use them.
The second is a networks issue (and reminds me of Peter's lament). Did Mike contact the top 10 electrical engineering schools to see whether there were people there who might have been interested, or any women in electrical engineering groups? Was he able to contact professors aside from the ones he already was working with to see if there were students or researchers he didn't know about? Did Peter call architecture schools? Since IDEA is about space and information design, Peter and I had a conversation in which I suggested people from the field of architecture. Both of these examples require bridging between fields, between a dotcom, camp approach to organizing and the rigors of the fields these fields draw from.
However, both Mike and Peter might have found the same thing. Even if they had contacted engineering or architecture schools, would it have yielded anything? Would electrical engineering students find Sketching relevant to how they approach prototyping? Does an architect want to discuss information design or information architecture (a phrase that makes architects of buildings cringe)? With the limited travel budgets that most academics see (or for that matter, that most professionals or students see), might they people have been able to attend? Or do they need to save the trip for the major meeting of their discipline? Do they care? Or is this not even on their radar, irrelevant?
I do consider the times that someone new has come to an event and they knock my socks off with a point of view I'd not heard before (like hearing Eyal Weizman at PLAN 2005, or meeting Matt Ward at Design Engaged, or Anne Galloway at SXSW 2003)... I would love more of those moments ...
In coming to India, there are two things I really wanted to do this summer but can't: Futuresonic, which is hosting the PLAN's Social Technologies Summit, and ISEA 2006, with its Interactive City Summit. Both are events that everybody seems to be a part of. Both have had outstanding precedents and it pains me to miss them. But to attend either means missing not doing my research in Bangalore, on one hand, or to leave too early, on the other. I chose to be here for the experience of spending a longer-than-a-vacation period of time in India. But ouch! So many things I'm missing.
About the last PLAN conference... I attended the February 2005 PLAN conference in London, where I heard the most stimulating talk I heard that year.Eyal Weizman spoke about the Deleuzian brigadier-generals in the Israeli Army-- the Frieze article linked here is very similar to the talk he gave in London at that time. Weizman talks about how the army studies ways to subvert space (if you see him speak, he'll show interviews on video). Shimon Naveh, the founder of the Operational Theory Research Institute says,
We are like the Jesuit Order. We attempt to teach and train soldiers to think. […] We read Christopher Alexander, can you imagine?; we read John Forester, and other architects. We are reading Gregory Bateson; we are reading Clifford Geertz. Not myself, but our soldiers, our generals are reflecting on these kinds of materials. We have established a school and developed a curriculum that trains operational architects.(via Ramage)
As I've mentioned, in India, I'm researching how people share mobile phones and the according manifestations of it in space and territory.
There's one instance of it right now in Mumbai, with the bomb blasts last night that killed 183 and injured 714. As happened with terrorist attacks in London last year, people are organizing online to check in with and contact people's families. Dina Mehta reported on a number of these efforts on her blog. Also, generated because of the attacks, there are a blog and wiki where people are placing information and coordinating calls to mobile phones. The Mumbai metroblog also posts information, linking to other sources in the traditional and non-traditional media.
Again, nothing totally new with this, but people are lending mobiles to each other. It's a different sharing modality than my research but also is important. It is generated by need and emergency--people are using their mobiles to call the mobiles of people they don't know but are listed as missing on the websites above. Though I've not yet found direct accounts, I figure people shared mobiles and called their loved ones to or from the stations and the hospitals. And finally, it's an event that took place in particular places at a specific time.
Steve Portigal forwarded me a few sites that are doing something to help the recovery effort. He says:
This site shows just one thread where people are talking about trying to reach each other and they are helping make connections whent he phone lines are down.
Also, Mumbai Help shows the news unfolding, with Mumbai's terrible, gridlocked traffic and other strange and terrible events indirectly or directly caused by the bombing.
I was exhausted last night and went straight to bed after dinner at Jonathan's. That's why I missed the news of the blasts in Mumbai (Bombay): serial blasts across the city during rush hour. 164 people were killed. It seems to be the work of two Islamic militant groups, one Pakistani, the other a student group in Mumbai, working in concert with each other in Mumbai's state. (More specifically, Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and activists of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)).
I am in Bangalore, not Mumbai. Bangalore is about 1000 km, or 600 miles from Mumbai (and I sense that it's a world away in many ways). So I'm fine--we're all fine--here in Bangalore. I hope the same will be the case for the families and friends of the people I work with and have gotten to know in the week I've been here. Will report more soon.
I had planned to write about the last several days, about Arachna and her lovely friends, about my flatmates and apartment house mates, with whom I've formed a little community, about going to the bar with the great view, of the auto rickshaws and shopping and walking.
Instead, I'm wiped out. Not sure what it was I ate or drank, but I got stomach cramps and diarrhea. I've been being very careful and was sure it wouldn't happen this quickly. The Yale Travel Clinic nurse was adamant that I take antibiotics at the first sign of a bug. I waited a bit--would it subside? But I gave into the meds. My flatmate Carolyn brought me club soda and I'm thrilled.
And I'm going to miss the final game of the World Cup. I'm going to be sleeping. I'm wiped out enough to not really care. Someone, just tell me who wins.
When I wake up here, the first thing I hear are the birds. No ordinary chirping, these are tropical birds with strange calls. The bird calls invite other birds: right now, I hear a grouchy crow. The birds start at the very first light, while it's still gray in my room. The light brightens and intensifies. Human voices, some of them rhythmic and hawking wares (tomatoes, corn, vegetables) shout. And the ever-growing din of the incessant traffic, the car horns, rickshaw horns, scooter engines, motors. Yet still, the woman across the street uses a long broom to clean the sidewalk and her part of the street.
I'm tired from absorbing so much, tired from jet lag. Yesterday, I didn't even do that much beyond being at work, going to Coffee Day for a delicious blended coffee. India doesn't have Starbucks (at least, not that I've encountered) but they do have Coffee Day, and it's ubiquitous. In a place where people don't frequent bars and drink in mixed company, it's okay to tell your parents you're going to meet someone at Coffee Day. It's always buzzing with people and I think I might need to go investigate more of them. (Kick me, beat me, send me to a cafe.)
Off to shower and then to MSR's spiffy offices. It's very comfortable there. The interior design is gorgeous, the people are lovely, we eat lunch on the roof, there is yoga and kickboxing. (Not all at the same time.) I think tonight, I'll try to venture out again. Last night, I just needed some rest and quiet. Okay, really, I played a lot of World of Warcraft but it helped matters.
A wonderful first day ... where I end up having lunch on the roof, hearing a good presentation, eat Baskin-Robbins, then take a motor rickshaw to the Oberoi, meet a mutual friend, meet young artists and the well-known founder of the NID-- National Institute of Design, then go home again, finally meeting my sufficiently snarky new flatmate. (This is a high calling: I like her). The people in the gorgeous office are cool, including the people I'm working for and their people.
I was prepared to not love India. But India has treated me kindly in the last 18 hours, stares and expectations notwithstanding.
So tired. But I'm here. I'm at the guest flat that I'm staying in in Bangalore. More soon.
A little later, I cried quite a bit and held Enrique close, and then waved him off to the parking lot. I went through security, waited for a delayed plane, boarded my flight to London.
The flight? Uneventful ranging toward annoying. The portly woman sitting on the aisle would not stand up when I or the young woman in the middle needed to use the restroom. This made it very precarious when I needed to get out before I went to sleep. I perched and then leapt over.
Now I'm at Heathrow in that floaty, jet-lagged, slept a couple hours state. I get on my flight to Bangalore in 45 minutes. Seven hours later, I land in India. People have told me that I'll be greeted by a lack of infrastructure and by chaos at the airport. It will be 4:30 a.m. when I land. Someone will have a sign with my name on it. I hope to be able to change some money to tip accordingly. Then a bit more sleep and off to Microsoft Research at some point during the day.
I can't even imagine what it's going to be like. I have tried not to try but am also surprised by the photographs. Where I'm staying looks clean and comfortable. Where I'm working looks beautiful. Where I'm researching (out and about in the city), I can't even fathom what it looks like.
So here's to jumping off the diving board into something I can't yet see. Wish me luck.
It came quickly. Tonight, I leave for India via London. 14+ hours on two flights with a four hour layover in London, though honestly, I've been in the air that long between Italy and San Francisco. It's just that it still seems longer or farther--it's India after all.
At 5 a.m. the morning of the 5th, I'll arrive there. Something about this week is funny with me and movement: I left for Munich July 5, 2000, and moved back to San Francisco from Chicago on July 6, 2002.
It's a long time to be on a short trip, and yet it's not. Lots of people here have left for the summer and many won't even know that I've gone. I get back on August 24, though that could be sooner if Enrique doesn't visit.
As you might imagine, it's hard to leave behind the person I spend most of my time with and who's been the most substantial part of my last 14 months. But we remind each other that I'll be back soon enough. I'll miss him lots nonetheless.
Writing is what I'll be doing a lot of in Bangalore... writing for field notes, writing to parse my field notes, writing to make sense of things. I will also be writing more here. There's bound to be more to say. My New Haven life is quiet and small, most of the time. India should be a feast in any case, even if I don't love everything. Maybe I will. It will surely change the way I see things! What an adventure. I'm nervous. :)
