I’ve been interested in the iPhone as a research device for a while (Data Logger is a free iPhone app that allows you to geotag and track all sorts of input), but there’s a few movements on using the iPhone as an educational device. Is it a tool, or another example of the digital divide? More thoughts to come.
For the end of the semester I like to talk about Deviance and Drugs. It’s a good way to end on a high note. I have some shtick proposing that heroin should be legalized and how I’m an addict myself, of caffeine. But in discussing it with Ben we came upon the ‘uses’ of drugs, which would be a nice connection with Herb Gans’ ‘The Uses of Poverty.’ Ben pointed me to Doug Rushkoff’s book, Cyberia, wherein he illustrates how the computing innovations of the 90s were largely fueled by MDMA. In an article, ‘E: Prescription For Cultural Renaissance,’ he describes a three-stage process of 1.) breaking down inhibitions, 2.) developing an empathy towards others’ emotional needs, and 3.) nurturing a sense of communal, non-verbal communication. As Ben explained, the thinking behind this is that the drug does different things, manifests itself in different subcultures and, for Rushkoff, as the “fledgling Silicon Alley firms became dependent on Grateful Deadheads and other psychedelics users as programmers, cyberculture became known as a ‘cyberdelic’ movement.” The entire second part of Cyberia, Drugs: The Substances of Designer Reality, is available here. Despite making note of Howard Rheingold’s fashion sense, I have never thought of this before.
Coffee as a substance is not without its historical moment as well. Peter Stallybrass, in The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, notes that coffee served as a powerful component matched with the rise of capitalism. Perhaps ‘Spirit’ isn’t the right word. He quotes an 18th Century James Howell:
’tis found already that this coffee-drink hath caused a greater sobriety among the nations… Whereas formerly apprentices and clerks, with others, used to take the morning draught with Ale, Beer, or Wine, which by the dizziness they cause the brain made many unfit for business, they use now to play the good fellow in this wakeful and civil drink. (1986: 97).
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/6966228]
This is an old story in the terms of internet history (two years ago), but I almost forgot it when teaching Media & Technology and I wanted to post it here so I would remember it next time. The video ‘Crank Dat’ (along with the dance in the video) because a huge hit, with everyone from MIT grad students to Pari and Harvin‘s ‘Crank Dat Curry Sauce’ doing their own interpretations of the song and dance. It was so successful that when Soulja Boy was signed to a major label the new video portrayed a clueless African American Record Executive having the phenomenon explained to him by two little kids. As a sidenote, the MIT grad student who played a small part in the internet phenomenon received a letter from some lawyer with a ‘cease and desist’ order (view his response here). That, I imagine, would signal the end of the ‘internet sensation’ portion of the song’s shelf life!
Speaking of copyright, here‘s a nice video by law professor Michael Geist about the super secret copyright treaty in the works at present.
Despite reading Benjamin and Situationists, Urban Sociology students rarely see how individual practices can also be a part of shaping cities. It’s not the only thing, but it’s a part of the picture. I love these images, although I’m starting to feel mixed about Detroit being continually cast as the ultimate blighted, post-apocalyptic city. From the ever-fabulous Sweet Juniper blog:
In the heart of summer, too, it becomes clear that the grid laid down by the ancient planners is now irrelevant. In vacant lots between neighborhoods and the attractions of thoroughfares, bus stops and liquor stores, well-worn paths stretch across hundreds of vacant lots. Gaston Bachelard called these les chemins du désir: pathways of desire. Paths that weren’t designed but eroded casually away by individuals finding the shortest distance between where they are coming from and where they intend to go.
Update (bumped up from ‘comments’ so that I’ll remember it): Tom adds “This reminds me a of a story that a professor told me in one of my engineering classes about a new college that was built and decided to just place sidewalks and steps around the front and side exits of all the buildings. Then they allowed the students to use the campus for the first year. After that, they paved all the worn footpaths between the buildings, dorms and dining halls. It had something to do with allowing natural systems to develop on their own and how sometimes a solution more efficient than the best engineered design will arise.”
My students have a hard time imagining that all kids don’t start on a level playing field. After reading George Farkas’ ‘Black White Test Score Gap,’ and showing them this video, they’re changing their minds. (Although I may never convince them that Disney has racist and sexist elements to it.)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-5x9mkBcCU&feature=player_embedded]
Last week for our culture reading group, I had to lead the discussion on Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style, a classic that many had not read. So, instead of giving a mini-lecture on the book, I thought I would give some of the trans-Atlantic cultural exchanges a little context by going through some of the songs that seeped into my psyche when I was too young to know what it was all about. First, I showed them Toots and the Maytals’ 1968 song, ‘Pressure Drop‘ and then the title track cover of Robert Palmer’s 1975 R&B version, and then to show the link from Reggae to Punk: The Clash’s 1978 B-Side. Then The Specials’ version, which only came out in 1996, but their inter-racial ska-punk was certainly influenced by these movements. (And I hate to say it, but it was only when I read Hebdige’s book that I figured out that The Specials’ ‘A Message to You, Rudy‘ and The Clash’s ‘Rudy Can’t Fail‘ were references to Rude Boy subculture–Jamaican patois for a juvenile delinquent.)
Then, just to show that Toots wasn’t oblivious to the way in which cross-cultural exchanges had their benefits, I played for the group their killer rendition of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads,’ which replaces ‘West Virginia’ with ‘West Jamaica.’
Update: Not completely disconnected, I came across Daniele Tamagni’s new book The Gentlement of Bacongo, a photo essay of the street style of the Sapeurs, or dandies, of the Congo. ‘Sape’ (the ‘Society for the Advancement of People of Elegance’ or ‘Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes’) is called ‘the religion of clothing.’ According to Dylan Jones, who reviewed the book, Sapeurs ‘fantasise about walking the streets of Paris or Brussels – places most can only dream of visiting – returning to Brazzaville as sartorial aristocrats of ultimate elegance.’ This distinctive style is a rebellion against traditional African costume… There is a strict code of honor and sense of morality as members, and there is no violence or fighting. According to the book, it’s all done with the clothes: Pierre Cardin, Roberto Cavalli, Dior, Fendi, Gaultier, Gucci, Issy Miyake, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Yohji Yamamoto. I would love to see a Hebdige version of this phenomenon.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU]
It is technology that has made them different, and as we see what this technology can do we need to recognize you can’t kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it. We can’t stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground. We can’t make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, “pirates.” And is that good? We live in this weird time, it’s kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law, and that’s what I — we — are doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting. And in a democracy we ought to be able to do better. Do better, at least for them, if not for opening for business. –Lawrence Lessig
My research for a paper on ethnographic characters has taken me back over a century of sociological thinking and there has been no better resource than The Mead Project. I realize that this is something that I should share with anyone who visits this site. I have been digging into Thomas and Park, and there’s been a lot of great, seemingly forgotten texts here. Enjoy.
From farm to fork, the use of urban spaces is greening up, from Baltimore to Detroit. Carolyn Steel on ‘How to Feed a City.’ (And Robert Neuwirth on ‘Squatter Cities.’) More to come.