Eyjafjallajökull by fridgeirsson

While the Eyjafjallajökull eruption seems to have subsided, the Icelandic people continue to reckon with the aftereffects of their country's financial collapse. Although currently overshadowed by the woes of the Eurozone, the economic situation for Icelanders remains grim. While the economic crisis or kreppa is ongoing, there have been several encouraging narratives that have caught my attention and interest. The kreppa is generally understood to be a problem of opaque, corrupt politics as much as it is one of economics. The Icelandic media is eager to identify green shoots of progress, particularly those in the form of grassroots organizing, small businesses, and tech and media entrepreneurship. Many Icelanders hope that they can innovate their way out of this crisis. My interest focuses on this unusual confluence of populist demand for political reform with a surprising array of commercial and noncommercial initiatives to promote economic and political innovation.

One of the leitmotifs of kreppa blogosphere chatter is that Iceland has nowhere to go but up, thus there is nothing to be lost in sociopolitical experimentation. With a highly literate national population of just a few hundred thousand and excellent communications infrastructure, radical ideas and plans seem to move quickly from planning to implementation. The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, for example, aims to legally establish Iceland as a jurisdiction that radically supports investigative journalism and free expression, and has attracted significant support. Other "experiments" seem to have lost steam as participants can quickly realign their attention and priorities. One influential institution in the area of entrepreneurial experimentation and political "crowdsourcing" has been the Ministry of Ideas (Hugmyndaráðuneytið). While I plan to write more about the Ministry and its innovation and crowdsourcing efforts in the future, I currently have a small bibliography of media reports in languages I can read. Maybe this will be useful to others.

Gehrman, A. (2009, November 19). Einmal über alles reden. Zeit Online. http://www.zeit.de/2009/48/WOS-Island?page=all

Gudjonsson, G. M. (2009, June) Ministry of Ideas: Overview of grassroot activities in Iceland (slides). http://www.slideshare.net/gudjon/ministry-of-ideas-overview-of-grassroot-projects-in-iceland-june-2009

Holmsteinn, G. (2010, April). Ministry of Ideas explained. Gunnar Holmsteinn talks. http://gunniho.com/post/486461365/ministryofideas

Iceland's government to cooperate with the anthill. (2009, November 24).  Iceland Review Online. https://secure.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=16567&ew_0_a_id=352443

Integrity named Iceland's most important value. (2009, November 16). Iceland Review Online. https://secure.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=352029

Knight, S. (2009, November 13). In Iceland, trying to reprogram government. OhMyGov!. http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2009/11/13/in-iceland-trying-to-reprogram-government.aspx

Knight, S. (2010, June 10). Banksters, Corrupt Politicians Face Prosecution - in Iceland. truthout. http://www.truth-out.org/special-investigative-report-inspires-reformers-terrifies-powerful-iceland60279

Legaspi, A. (2010, January 11). The many ants of Iceland. Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/11/the_many_ants_of_iceland

Pfeil, M. & Roloff, L. Y. (2009, July). Alles auf anfang. brandeinsOnline. http://www.brandeins.de/archiv/magazin/bewegt-euch/artikel/alles-auf-anfang.html

Quinn, B. (2010, March 4). After banking bust, Iceland turns to free-market innovation. Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2010/0304/After-banking-bust-Iceland-turns-to-free-market-innovation

Sigmundsdóttir, A. (2009, February 14). Ministering to the grass root. Iceland Weather Report. http://icelandweatherreport.com/2009/02/ministering-to-the-grass-root.html

Sigmundsdóttir, A. (2009, November 11). Tired of waiting, Icelanders gather to create a roadmap for the future. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alda-sigmundsdottir/tired-of-waiting-icelande_b_349420.html

Sigmundsdóttir, A. (2009, November 15). A rundown of the Assembly results. Iceland Weather Report. http://icelandweatherreport.com/2009/11/a-rundown-of-the-assembly-results.html

Main Building at UT Austin (photo by jfre81)

It's been awhile. Most of my link-sharing and short posts in 2009 and 2010 seem to have been rerouted to Facebook, and to a lesser extent, Twitter. For various reasons, I hope to pull some of my social media performance back out of Facebook. This is somewhat of a test post to see what has broken in the intervening months since I was last present here. So, a brief roundup:

Texas...

Angela and I moved to Austin last August. I took an awesome postdoc position with Sharon Strover and the UT Austin | Portugal CoLab in advanced digital media. What's the CoLab? "The UT Austin | Portugal International Collaboraboratory for Emerging Technologies or CoLab is a partnership between the Science and Technology Foundation of Portugal (FCT) and the University of Texas at Austin, in conjunction with several Portuguese universities. Launched in 2007, the goal of this project is to expand the presence of advanced digital media through educational and research exchange." I'm currently teaching a semester-long comm theory course for the doctoral digital media program at the University of Porto. I was in Porto in March to start things off face-to-face, and we've since held weekly seminar meetings via videoconference. I'll return to Porto next month for final exams.

I also have a lecturer appointment in the Radio-Television-Film department at UT, and taught an undergrad Intro to Digital Media class both last fall and this spring. The classes were incredibly fun and rewarding to teach, and provided an opportunity to stretch my media production knowledge a bit. Both classes worked with Carlos Santana's Architects of a New Dawn project to produce short web videos (read about it in Communique).

...research...

My research has included the continuation of inquiries started at Buffalo as well as some progress in new directions. I got to travel a bit for conferences and have been happy to have several manuscripts published or accepted for publication in the past few months. While I won't be in Singapore next month for ICA, papers coauthored with Kevin Lim and Michael Stefanone will be presented by those fine fellows.

My "new directions" include work related to indie media institutions and economics. I collected survey data from several hundred attendees and all of the exhibitors at the STAPLE! Independent Media Festival in March, and will be presenting some of this work at NCA this fall in San Francisco. The changing relationships among artists, consumers and content are a fascinating topic, and I'm especially interested in the new economic spaces and models that indie creators are currently experimenting with.

...North Carolina!

This fall, I'll be joining the faculty of the School of Communications at Elon University as an Assistant Professor. Elon, located between Greensboro and Chapel Hill / Durham, is a dynamic institution and a great professional and personal match for my interests and skills. The rapidly growing comm school just launched a cutting-edge Masters of Interactive Media program. Like the school and university as an whole, the iMedia program has a special focus on social engagement. Projects within the school include the Elon/Pew Internet Project Imagining the Internet and the Sunshine Center of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition. Many other little things -- meaningful sustainability initiatives, the strong promotion of study abroad (and a winter term that makes it logistically easy), the stunningly beautiful campus, etc. -- give me much to look forward to.

<several questions about social activities, including time spent with a "romantic partner">

...

How many hours per week do you chat with a romantic partner on the phone?

I DONT HAVE A FREAKING ROMANTIC PARTNER

How many text messages do you exchange with a romantic partner per week?

YOUR REALLY RUBBING IT IN NOW

...

Wir Künstler verachten niemand gründlicher als den Dilettanten, den Lebendigen, der glaubt, obendrein bei Gelegenheit einmal ein Künstler sein zu können. Ich versichere Sie, diese Art von Verachtung gehört zu meinen persönlichsten Erlebnissen. Ich befinde mich in einer Gesellschaft in gutem Hause, man ißt, trinkt und plaudert, man versteht sich aufs beste, und ich fühle mich froh und dankbar, eine Weile unter harmlosen und regelrechten Leuten als ihresgleichen verschwinden zu können. Plötzlich (dies ist mir begegnet) erhebt sich ein Offizier, ein Leutnant, ein hübscher und strammer Mensch, dem ich niemals eine seines Ehrenkleides unwürdige Handlungsweise zugetraut hätte, und bittet mit unzweideutigen Worten um die Erlaubnis, uns einige Verse mitzuteilen, die er angefertigt habe. Man gibt ihm, mit bestürztem Lächeln, diese Erlaubnis, und er führt sein Vorhaben aus, indem er von einem Zettel, den er bis dahin in seinem Rockschoß verborgen gehalten hat, seine Arbeit vorliest, etwas an die Musik und die Liebe, kurzum, ebenso tief empfunden wie unwirksam. Nun bitte ich aber jedermann: ein Leutnant! Ein Herr der Welt! Er hätte es doch wahrhaftig nicht nötig…! Nun, es erfolgt, was erfolgen muß: lange Gesichter, Stillschweigen, ein wenig künstlicher Beifall und tiefstes Mißbehagen ringsum. Die erste seelische Tatsache, deren ich mir bewußt werde, ist die, daß ich mich mitschuldig fühle an der Verstörung, die dieser unbedachte junge Mann über die Gesellschaft gebracht; und kein Zweifel: auch mich, in dessen Handwerk er gepfuscht hat, treffen spöttische und entfremdete Blicke. Aber die [42] zweite besteht darin, daß dieser Mensch, vor dessen Sein und Wesen ich soeben noch den ehrlichsten Respekt empfand, in meinen Augen plötzlich sinkt, sinkt, sinkt… Ein mitleidiges Wohlwollen faßt mich an. Ich trete, gleich einigen anderen beherzten und gutmütigen Herren, an ihn heran und rede ihm zu. ›Meinen Glückwunsch‹, sage ich, ›Herr Leutnant! Welch hübsche Begabung! Nein, das war allerliebst!‹ Und es fehlt nicht viel, daß ich ihm auf die Schulter klopfe. Aber ist Wohlwollen die Empfindung, die man einem Leutnant entgegenzubringen hat?… Seine Schuld! Da stand er und büßte in großer Verlegenheit den Irrtum, daß man ein Blättchen pflücken dürfe, ein einziges, vom Lorbeerbaume der Kunst, ohne mit seinem Leben dafür zu zahlen.

-Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger (1922)

Cut short by Cortes, Mexica philosophy did not have the chance to reach as far as Greek or Chinese philosophy. But surviving testimony intimates that it was well on its way. The stacks of Nahuatl manuscripts in Mexican archives depict the tlamatinime meeting to exchange ideas and gossip, as did the Vienna Circle and the French philosophs and the Taisho-period Kyoto school. Their musings of the tlamatinime occurred in intellectual neighborhoods frequented by philosophers from Brussels to Beijing, bu the mix was entirely the Mexica's own. Voltaire, Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes never had a chance to speak with these men or even know of their existence--and here, at last, we begin to appreciate the enormity of the calamity, for the disintegration of native America was a loss not just to those societies but to the human enterprise as a whole.

Having grown separately for millennia, the Americas were a boundless sea of novel ideas, dreams, stories, philosophies, religions, moralities, discoveries, and all the other products of the mind. Few things are more sublime or characteristically human than the cross-fertilization of cultures. The simple discovery by Europe of the existence of the Americas caused an intellectual ferment. How much grander would have been the tumult if Indian societies had survived in full splendor!

-Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus (2005)

The quick and easy solution to searching Google Scholar from Firefox is to install the search engine plugin from the Mycroft Project site. That's it. Just click the link, hit the "add" button on the popup, and google scholarly to your heart's content.

There's another Scholar search scenario that requires a tiny bit more effort. If you are affiliated with a research institution or library, you may have noticed that Scholar will automatically return links to content in your library (full-text journal articles, bibliographic records, etc.) if you using one of their computers. If you would like to get this functionality from somewhere else (such as Starbucks or your home), you need to route your Scholar search requests through an HTTP proxy at your institution. Example: my institution is the University at Buffalo, and my library provides off-campus access through a proxy at https://gate.lib.buffalo.edu/.

If your institution provides access to a proxy, it's easy to build a Firefox search plugin that utilizes it for all your Scholar searches. Just go to the Plugin Generation page and fill out the relevant details. For my UB Scholar plugin, I just tweaked the default Scholar plugin URL from http://scholar.google.com to http://scholar.google.com.gate.lib.buffalo.edu, and changed the name from googlescholar to googlescholar_ub. The XML of my plugin is available here for reference.

Good luck and happy plugin-making. Feel free to drop me a comment if you have any questions.

I dropped by the Mass. Ave Project again this weekend to lend a hand with the strawbale greenhouse being constructed there. The plan was to compress and plaster the bale walls. While we didn't quite get that finished, community members and friends had a lot of fun mixing the plaster with their feet. The Buffalo News stopped by, and caught me crouched on top of the framing as we worked to "cap" the bales with a wooden support structure.

It was a beautiful day -- the rest of my photos are here

Google Scholar provides direct links to articles in journal databases if your IP can be authenticated as a subscribing institution's -- very convenient for on-campus users, but more of a hassle for off-campus users. This plugin automatically directs your Scholar search request through the UB library proxy. This is probably useful to no one besides me, but I thought I'd share.

Kudos to the Mycroft folks for making plugin creation so simple...

The project is a great example of broad community-based collaboration: local architect and UB professor Kevin Connors and his students contributed design and labor, strawbale construction expert David Lanfear provided his construction experience, while the Massachusetts Avenue Project provided the building site and general coordination. Approximately three dozen volunteers worked at the site throughout the day, mostly consisting of Kevin's students and friends of the builders. But there were several people, like me, who stopped by out of curiosity.

When I arrived, the foundation and framing was completed (apparently the foundation was laid last semester). Lengths of hose and tubing were set into the foundation about a foot under the surface, and my first assigned task was to run nylon webbing through these tubes. This webbing would then be run over the top of the bale walls, and cinched down tightly to vertically compress the bales. Unfortunately, many of these tubes had filled with clay and mud in the intervening months, and it took several hours to clear them all and run the webbing through.

After lunch, courses of bales were stacked and tied to the wooden frame. Two long pointed "needles" were threaded with baling twine, punched through the bales, then secured back to the frame. This is a lengthy process, at least for us greenhorn builders, and we had only finished three courses of bales by 5:00pm that evening.

The existing schedule states that the walls will be plastered next weekend, but it looks like that deadline might slip a bit.

There is a lot of negativity and pessimism in Western New York. It's incredibly refreshing to spend time with enthusiastic people who are working hard to make a difference in their community.

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Ouch. Or maybe I'm just still flying under the radar? (this silliness via Pharyngula)