catch up

Mar 4, 2005 //

Above is all one needs to recast their thesis.

Ok.

So.

I’m out of the webcam business. For a variety of reasons I have given up on that as a thesis topic. Primarily I don’t see the research as having much application. The text and video interface isn’t going to be with us for much longer. Once voice becomes widely available, its going to profoundly change the interaction rituals on camera. That means that my research would have a pretty limited shelf life. While it might say something about this little snapshot in time of webcam interaction, it won’t have a lot of application going forward.

And my family breaths a collective sigh of relief as I’m no longer working on hot sexy webcams.

Instead I’ll be looking into bots: AI programs that are programmed to act human. My interest in bots is an outgrowth of my webcam research. During that time I encountered a number of them while spending time in YahooChat rooms. So right now I’m pulling a new thesis proposal and refocusing my research. Which leads me to that other blog I mentioned a few days ago.

If you’re interested in following my research, I’ll be posting my public fieldnotes on that second blog: headnotes.

In other news, make sure you check out the new Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Internet Trailer. It’s far far better than the one currently running in theatres.

Tags U Chicago

Categories personal, praxis

friday ups and downs

Feb 28, 2005 //

This past Friday was full of lots of ups and downs. To begin with, we ran out data collection for Social Psychology. For our experiment, we conducted 48 interviews. All of our participants were recruited from the Reynolds Club, the closest thing to a Student Union, here on campus.

This is my group: Andrea, Shewta, Eric.

This is one of the essays that we had people read. The crucial thing in all of this is the picture. Some had Jordan (this rather punky picture), others had Irene (more conservative) and some had no picture.

Here I am with my researcher face on.

48 surveys… Rock On! Of course now its time for data entry… bleh

On the downside, I had my car vandalized. Some jerk bashed in my driver’s window. Strangely nothing was stolen. Even more strangely I would have felt better if something was. Having an item stolen would have provided me with a sense that there was a purpose to the attack on my poor Subaru. Thankfully I was able to get the window fixed on Saturday. Here’s a shot of the car-nage

Categories Uncategorized

Shiny and new

Feb 27, 2005 //

Tomorrow this begins in earnest. The goal of this blog is for me to situate and theorize on publicly sharable headnotes and fieldnotes over the course of my research.

I’m also going to capture research issues pertaining directly and indirectly to “cyber-anthrology” (and I promise that will be the last time I use that phrase.

Categories Uncategorized