Ok… I just turned in one of my outstanding finals from last quarter and registered for summer graduation. So its on. I’m going to do this!
Dre will be visiting this weekend and I’m really excited. We haven’t seen each other in three months and that’s been really, really tough.
Thesis stuff is moving forward. I’ve had a couple good meetings with faculty that are helping clarify a number of important issues.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it isn’t a train.
On the plus side I have a thesis advisor! Dr. Micheal Silverstein, sooper genius (seriously he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Grant, often referred to as the Genius Grant). He was the teacher of the scary Language in Culture class from first quarter, whose midterm question was immortalized in this post.
I’m actually rather excited about this. Though I have to admit that I am a little concerned that I now can actually sorta speak Silverstinian (silverstein-glossia ?)
I’ve hit a bit of a theoretical snag. Basically I’ve realized that in the case of bots what we are really looking as is still mediated communication between two people and not mediated communication between a person and a bot/AI. The latter model privileges a program with a level of agency that I don’t think holds up under close analysis.
If this is the case, an interaction with a bot can be considered twice mediated person to person interaction. The first level of mediation is that chat/im software being used to communicate. The second level is the bot itself, carrying and projecting its creator’s content.
The snag is that while theoretically you are engaged in an interaction with the bots creator via the bot, from a practical standpoint, it doesn’t appear that most people register this. The bot is seen as a separate entity from its creator. So I need to resolve how I discuss bot aspects as part of the paper.
Which means the next post will probably not be for weeks. I got quite a bit done today (and last night for that matter). Still there’s so much to do.
I’m still trying to finish two overdue finals from previous quarters. My goal is to have them done by the end of the weekend. After that it’s all thesis all of the time. The next major deadline for that is a workshop which I’ve committed to presenting at on June 3rd (or somewhere in that area).
Plus I’ve got to start packing.
On the job front, I’ve had a couple nibbles so far. Unfortunately one of those was for a firm in Texas. That’s not going to happen.
Time is flying. Faster and faster. Michicago went very well. I’ve got about three weeks left of school. I’m not quite sure how I will get everything done. I’ve got a minimum of 60 pages dues. And then the thesis which I’m calc’ing at around 60 pages.
Plus I need to find a job, a task I wasn’t expecting to have to undertake. Any leads in the Rochester area would be appreciated.