When considering “What is an author?”, Foucault describes writers as hollow shells destined to shuffle around drafty apartments, stare vacantly across town squares, and presumably come into the unknowing ownership of a large number of cats.

Alright, some of that is me. He does say:

..it is a voluntary obliteration of the self that does not require representation in books because it takes place in the everyday existence of the writer. Where a work had the duty of creating immortality, it now attains the right to kill, to become the murderer of its author.

Given the number of papers I am writing this week, I might be putting this to a literal test. However, I just received some exciting news that is deserving of an interruption: Digital Technologies of the Self is out, and along with it, my chapter on craigslist Missed Connections.

Image courtesy of Yasmine Abbas's hand, and the helpful birds on Twitter.

You can find information about it on the publisher’s site, and it has even shown up on Amazon, where you can (as I have – tehe) sign up to be notified when they have it ready to be shipped to your eager hands!

What is the book about, you ask? (more…)

Tonight Judy Olsen presented in my research methods on what she calls “the ten questions.” Apparently originally deployed on PhD students at the School of Information and the University of Michigan, these ten questions are designed to structure your research and (apparently) make graduation day arrive sooner. While they do structure research into a certain type of academic work, I do like the narrative they create. Without delay, here they are:

1. What is the problem?
2. Who cares?
3. What have people done about it? Why is this not solved?
4. What am I going to do about it?
5. What am I REALLY going to do? (A.K.A., how are you operationalizing this?)
6. What will/did you find?
7. What does this mean?
8. Who cares?
9. Where are you going to publish this?
10. What are you going to do next?

I am not exactly how this might map on to my attempts to problematize identity (ahem), but I am curious to try. Hold on, this might be a bumpy ride…

Driving away from UC Irvine’s campus, you only have to take a couple quick turns onto Newport Coast Drive before you find yourself racing down a hill towards Laguna Beach. Within seconds you will come around a bend, and the hills will open up to reveal an ocean so blue it is sometimes hard to see where the water stops and the sky beings.

This is where I live. Apparently this is my new home. With images like these, so stunning they are almost trite, the whole thing is hard to believe, but this is what it looks like. It is surreal. (more…)

Last week, me and my best colleagues wrapped ourselves up in black polyester, walked across Healy Lawn at Georgetown, and after sweating for two hours in the sun, completed the last requirement for graduation.

I figured you might like some pictures.

See them all after the jump. (more…)

So the thesis is done, and life can return to normal, whatever that is. There is one piece of major news that has been noticeably absent from my blog over the last 20+ days: A Ph.D. decision.

I am going to UC Irvine!

Those following my twitter feed already have heard the news, as well as peers at CCT and the AAMC, and everyone else who has suffered through my never-ending love affair with anteaters (kind of one of those jokes that has taken on a life of its own). However, I realized I need to throw something up here once professors at various universities (you know who you are) started writing me curious about where I had decided to go.

This was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, but not for any of the trite reasons. After visiting programs I found myself wishing I could mash them up into one delicious mega-Starburst. I was also really upset at the prospect of not working with so many exciting classmates. “These are your colleagues!” my advisor, David Ribes, kindly told me during that fateful decision week.

So why Irvine? Surprisingly, not the weather. I am going to go work in medicine. Medicine? Yeah, that was my initial response as well.

UC Irvine’s Medical Center is in the process of overhauling all of their technology, including their electronic medical health records system (EMR). Yunan Chen and Gillian Hayes are doing a number of studies during this transition, and they kindly invited me to join them to pursue my interests in digital identity in a more institutionalized setting.

This could not be more perfect. My research has increasingly focused on the ways in which identity is categorized and institutionalized into things like software. At UCI I will actually get to sit down with developers and clinicians as they implement their system. It is a priceless opportunity. Needless to say, an EMR is a giant leap forward from Facebook and craigslist.

5 more years of details to follow, but for today, one last anteater:

I am a bit bleary eyed, but I am done.

I completely dropped off the face of the earth for the last month, but I am done!

Everything is signed, PDFs have been uploaded — I have finished my Master’s degree at Georgetown.

I owe you a blog post. It has been too long. My blog appears unkempt, more or less keeping pace with my bedroom.

I blame the thesis; nothing seems to exist beyond it. My mother called me today asking if I was going to send out graduation announcements.  I had to admit I had no idea when my graduation was. “May, right?”

So what are we missing?

• I owe you a review on that comic book based on Missed Connections. (good so far!)
• You might be wondering how my interview with craigslist founder Craig Newmark went. (great, but in none of the ways I anticipated.)
• I certainly owe my advisor more thesis writing. (umm…)

However, for the next couple of weeks, the dominant question is “Where will I be living next fall?” I am flying around the country visiting schools, and attempting to figure out (typically in 48 hours or less) where I would like to spend the next four years (roughly 34,944 hours, for you math types) of my life.

Where am I going?

(more…)

Next Wednesday, craigslist founder Craig Newmark will be visiting Georgetown University. Given that my thesis examines craigslist extensively (with a particular focus on Missed Connections, of course), I have been given an incredible opportunity to interview Mr. Newmark. I am currently compiling a list of questions, but I wanted to let you do the same:

What would you ask the founder of craigslist?

Leave it in the comments, or twitter me. If the question is good, I am happy to get you an answer.

Update: For more information on the lecture, check out the event on Facebook. It is open to everyone, so if you are local, free up your calendar and come!

Last night I got an acceptance letter to Michigan State University. <Little happy dance.> I know it is still early in the admissions process, but it is nice to have a firm yes from one of my top school choices.

With the prospect of moving quickly approaching, I have found myself imagining what life might be like at any of the seven schools to which I applied. Honestly, I have to admit that East Lansing (where MSU is located — about 1.5 hours west of Detroit) has been the greatest mystery. So for the last 24 hours or so, I have found myself browsing housing ads on craigslist (it is psychotically cheap).

However, as a gay man, there is an entire other set of social variables that I am trying figure out. (more…)

A new book has just been released by cartoonist Julia Wertz, entitled “I Saw You…: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections“. Wertz gathered up some favorite Missed Connections and handed them to some of her favorite artists in order to give life to the anonymous posts anxiously hoping to be discovered online.

According to the NYT:

Ms. Wertz writes that she started reading Missed Connections not because she wanted to post an ad herself (oh yeah?) but because she was “intrigued” by the idea of “a subculture of people who feel they missed something great because they didn’t have the courage to speak up.”

I have always felt lucky studying Missed Connections. They are stories that tell themselves, and so I can only imagine how beautifully they must turn out once illustrated. Besides, this way I can justify reading some comics for my academic research! I have One-Clicked it, and will let you know how it is once it arrives next week.

(Thanks Barbara for the heads up!)