Quick note… IRB’s been submitted. Hopefully it will take about a week, provided there are no snags.

The finals are taking far more time than expected. As such, I’m not going to get those pictures up just yet. Hopefully I’m be more out in front of things by tomorrow.

On a slightly different note, as the last post suggested, it turns out that a number of folks who are checking out the MAPSS (Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences here at the University of Chicago) program are coming across this blog. As I posted please feel free to ask me questions. Also, let me know if you are coming to the Campus Days event in April. I’ll be one of the tour guides for it. Plus a bunch of us are talking about putting together a “after hours” meet and greet with students at one of the local watering holes. I’ll make sure you know when and where.

Quickly though, here are a couple answers to be big questions:

1. Should I do MAPSS?
Short answer: yes
Long answer: if you are willing to work, it’s a great program. Arguably more intense than any single year of a PhD program. It will help sharpen your skills, focus your research, and hopefully get you into a better PhD program/get you more money when you go there.

2. Is MAPSS just a cash cow program?
The only people I have heard express that view are U of C undergrads. At least the MAP’ers who run in my circles are hanging and banging with the best Anthro/Psych PhD’s this school has to offer. One of my friends has already been accepting into the Anthro PhD program here at U of C. We’re on first name basis with some of the top Profs and researchers in the world. I know MAP’ers who are involved in top flight research and are co-presenting with Professors at conferences.

So no… I don’t think it’s a cash cow program. Nor do people like John and Jean Comaroff, Michael Siverstein, Susan Gal, Bertram Cohler, John Cacioppo, and many others.

3. Is U of C competitive?
Yes no maybe… can you repeat the question?

For MAPSS no. I think most of the competitiveness occurs on the undergraduate level. Don’t get me wrong, U of C is INTENSE. But all of the competition is with myself, not with my classmates.

Just got back from a weekend in isolation. I’m knee deep in finals. So starting tomorrow there will be new content in the form of pictures! I’ve gotten a lot of pics I’ve been meaning to share for a while. Hope you enjoy.

BTW for new MAPSS students who come across my blog on web searches, I’m happy to answer questions. Please e-mail my school account though: mattb (at) uchicago.edu

ok one class is now officially over. The giant paper is going well. I’ve submitted my thesis topic to a conference. I’m strung out and tired but makin’ progress.

2 Classes to wrap.

24×7 Chat Walkers : How artificial intelligence prostitutes commodify fantasy in online chat rooms

In this paper I examine how bots, computer programs written to mimic human behavior, are used by the adult industry to persuade individuals in online chat rooms to join pornographic websites. These bots are optimized to take advantage of the structure of cybersex interaction genres in order to fool chatters into thinking that they are talking with another human. Via a semiotic analysis of recorded interactions between humans and these machines as humans I demonstrate how bots rely on a chatter’s desire to be recruited into a voicing role (Bakhtin), based on cultural notions of sexuality, that gives them permission to transform their fantasies into a performative textual experience. In doing so I analyze how a bot’s user profile (identity) and response script (voice) are constructed to take advantage of preexisting stereotyped sexual fantasies and instantiate and propagate gender stereotypes. I explore how bots allow the adult industry to control both the production of fantasies and the living out of them as well. Finally, I consider the socioethical implications of these machines that “pretend” to be human. Through ethnographic interviews conducted with bot creators and chatters who interact with bots the paper explores how individuals in chat rooms react to bots and to chatters who mistake them for humans. I demonstrate how these dialogs can be viewed as part of a larger discourse on the ever expanding role of technology in our public and private lives.