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Year Note 4 – Fit the Third – Positions, stations, not jobs

By on December 6, 2010 in on the academy, weeknotes

One of the things I’ve found as being an academic is that it is much less a job and more a position or a station in life. Certainly that is the way it is historically constructed, and I think it is nice to take on a wider, social role and partake in the wonderfully victorian notion of having a station. Whether it should be like this is certainly open to debate.

I remember listening to an MP discussing his life and approach to what he on radio 4 and being struck by what he was talking about. I can’t quite remember the terminology he was using, but he was referring to the role that people like MPs, councillors, judges, etc take. There is a different sort of responsibility to the role you have, and it is not something that you just clock in and out of. He was reacting to the discussion about members of parliament hiding behind the “it’s just a job” line, that they needed to be fully responsible for their actions both within and without their ‘job’. Which I agree with. Not that they have to be working all the time, but that the role they take pervades their lives and the responsibility, and social context of what they do is now intrinsically tied up in who they are. As he was saying, this was a privilege as much as it was a burden.

One of the sad things that our corporatised state is doing is reducing everything to jobs, reducing the valuation of all activity through a neoliberal, capitalist approach. The value of a job is just the profit it can make for the individual or the organisation. And sadly universities have gone, or are going the same way. The academic is being forced out of having a social position and into a monetary producing unit. The same is true of police people, shopkeepers, librarians, that their value in a social and cultural ecology is discounted and only their purely economic value is kept. This is partly done by turning these positions into jobs, giving the individual the chance to clock off, and thus become a commodity, or a resource. It is only through having the richer engagement with a position or station in society or the community that this commodification process can be resisted.

The academic is set up to be exactly this, why else would you combine the weird plethora of obligations, activities and tasks that they are required to do. If it wasn’t intended on being this it would be much smarter to split up things up. The little rituals, and role in a wider community, that I blogged about the other week are also a part of this equation. If it is a job, why have those?

I want a position, a station, not just a job (or whatever the term should be, let me know if there is a better word for what I’m talking about, I’m sure I’ve got it wrong). There is more to being an academic that just doing what it says on the job description/contract… in fact it would be a pretty shit, boring job if you did.

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Year Note 4 – Fit the Fourth – Play

By on November 25, 2010 in on the academy, weeknotes

Ah, I think I need to play more. The last four years have seen a complete drain in playfulness in what I do. Which is more than a little ironic seeing as I’m spending all my time teaching and researching gaming and urban play.

I have probably said this somewhere before, but the career change to being an academic was like shifting into two new jobs at once. Trying to pick up a full time teaching job, whilst at the same time trying to become a researcher. A traditional academic route lets you do one after the other and it is hard enough then. On top of that having a child squeezes all those spare hours out of one’s life.

And this was meant to be a fun career change, doing a whole bunch of things I wanted to do and when I started out intending to be playful and cheeky with it. But the grind of continuous deadlines, faced down, alone, late at night, got rid of any desire for play.

Anyway, my new resolution is to make play time for myself during the day and more importantly, to make and manage my time to play with other people. I need some laterality and space for exploration in what I do in my day job. That is the thing that needs changing in my academic practice, which will make me both playful and more productive.

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Year Note 4 – Fit the Second – Rituals and Institutions

By on November 18, 2010 in on the academy, weeknotes

Having just come back from a graduation ceremony the fact that being an academic is not just a job is apparent. All the pomp and ceremony and hanging out in a big, breezy cathedral are not the normal aspects of a regular job.

When I graduated I thought universities and their ritual were a bit of an anachronism, and probably still did a little when I started out at UWE. They were cute, but past their time. It took me a couple of years, and some of my own students graduating, before I actually attended one. But I think the rituals like graduation highlight two very important and seemingly undervalued aspects of universities. There is the position of the academy as a social/cultural institution and the position of the academic as a role (or station) in society. Both of which I don’t think I particularly, or fully, appreciated when I started out, and also both of which are being every more quickly eroded ((especially under the new UK corporate management, though it is not just them that are to blame)).

Now though, rather than this being something vestigial, I actually think there is too little ritual and ceremony around university ((The only things we seem to have are freshers week/end and then graduation. Nothing else really fills the roll.)). Not that I think there should be some quirky oxbridge snobbery, strange handshakes and weird underwear. No, these need to be events, happenings, spaces and place that help the university fit into the city and the community. Also when I say university, that is the whole shooting match: the students, staff, academics, campus, branding, strategy, etc. Ground up, top down. One of the reasons that graudation is nice, and actually rather unusual, is that a lot of us are all together at the same time.

And the reason for needing more ritual, events, I think, is that universities are, and should be social institutions, not just businesses who churn out students and commodifiable knowledge. So they need rituals, events, activities and places where they can interact with the various communities in a variety of ways. Not just big flashy stuff, but little events too.

UWE’s position as “the partnership university” is good. And it does come through by partnering with communities outside itself. Not that I have any experience of other universities, but I think it does do it better than most.

I went into this graduation today, a bit glum, mulling over some of these thoughts about ritual, universities as social institutions and community relationships. But the talks from both the honorary PhD and the Pro-Chancellor were quite uplifting in that they really pushed home the relationships between the university, graduates and industry, as well as the wider community. They both described the university in the way I think it should be.

Plus I got to eat cupcakes with excited graduates.

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Year Note 4 – Fit the First – Hunting the Academic

By on November 17, 2010 in on the academy, weeknotes

The search for what it means to be an “academic” reminds me of the The Hunting of the Snark; very aptly titled “An Agony In Eight Fits”. The snark is very suggestive of this thing that we call an academic, it comes in many varieties, some with feathers that bite, some with whiskers that scratch. They are very ambitious and also like to sleep late into the day. However as we learn from the poem, when seeking the snark, one must beware that it is not a boojum. It is unclear from the poem whether a snark does really exist, are they all boojums, or is that just the one the baker meets? Certainly snarks are very tricky beasts, and going after one will be a life changing activity.

My academic ‘birthday’ happened a couple of weeks ago, I started being an academic on the 1st November. But like a typical lecturer I didn’t actually have the time to stop and reflect at the time, so I’m going to grab that time now, or it will never happen.

Four years means that this is now the longest job I’ve held down. I spent just under four years at both syzygy and the BBC. Both of which were formative experiences, but one’s where I felt I got my head around the job much quicker, although each of them kept throwing curveballs to the end. I felt comfortable in each after a couple of years and then a bit uncomfortable towards the end of four years. Which is why I moved on from each. I’m still trying to figure out what being an academic at UWE is all about. Four years felt like a long time at each of those jobs, but four years in a university doesn’t feel long.

After four years here I’m still constantly reconfiguring my approach and attitude towards what I’m doing. The job-ness of it is quite interesting at this point in time, both through my own experience and also through what is currently happening to higher education under the current government. Being an academic is not a job, it is more like a lifestyle choice, the boundaries are blurry and whilst I can walk away from the computer, the things I’m working on are never far from mind. Though walking away is difficult.

There is this idea, from outside the academy, that being a lecturer is all about sitting around drinking tea and having lots of time to have erudite discussion and pontificating about esoteric subjects. I think, deep down, there was a naive kernel of that in me when I took the job. I though that it would be a nice easy move from the big smoke to a more laid back lifestyle in the provinces, do some teaching and work on a PhD. How mistaken I was, and I only learnt that after having my life nuked by the teaching workload; unable to concentrate on what I had intended to do, let along my personal life. Two years ago I went for a job at Nokia, and when they offered me the job (in the end I turned it down) they, very seriously, said that this job wasn’t like academia and it would require doing some actual work. I had to try very hard not to laugh out loud.

I managed to find some good-looking data on unpaid overtime, it is a bit old, but lecturers (with teachers) are at the top of the list of unpaid overtime. Over eleven hours a week. This bears out with what I’ve experienced, in the first couple of years when I must have been doing more like twenty extra hours every week during term time, but luckily for me it has gotten a bit more controllable. Though the last couple of weeks the boojum is back and I’ve been working every opportunity I can and sometimes into the wee small hours.

However, I’m not complaining, this is something I want, and part of what it means to be an academic. I think the point is that this is not a “normal” job in a “normal” company. But a discussion of that will have to wait till at least tomorrow and Fit the Second.

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Week 210

By on November 15, 2010 in game studies, weeknotes

Finished Critical Debates assignment, wrote a short paper in the weekend and went from zero to lecture in two hours. Two very late nights and feeling wiped out by the week, but accomplished a lot.

Managed to really get into thinking about semiotics through doing the Critical Debates assignment. Since then I’ve been thinking about some of the semiotic inspired work in Game Studies. David Myers has been using it for many years and there is a Gonzalo Frasca article from the Video Game Reader that stands out in my mind. One of the questions that seem to come up through the work I’ve read, is wheter semiotics can be applied, as is, to games. The Myers work argues that there is a depth to the semiosis that can only happen through playing the game, the surface sign is not sufficient to truly understand the meaning. The Frasca article calls for a ‘simiotics’ to replace semiotics.

Semiotics is a huge, scary, amorphous field that crosses many disciplines and uses. Not that I really know that much about semiotics, but from what I read last week, I think that, as it stands, it has a lot of power for analysing games. But that gameplay and semiosis needs to take account of all three levels of semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. Some of the work I’ve read that discounts semiotics seems to only engage with the semantic nature of the field. Games create a syntax that alters the meanings of the signs in the system, and these systems are different from linguistic systems. They are a very different sort of “text” to read. I may have missed a big chunk of Game Studies somewhere (and believe me I really might have, I don’t get the time to read as much as I would like) that takes up the syntactic torch, but either it doesn’t exist or hasn’t been attempted.

That is not to say that this should specifically be a formalist approach like linguistics. But a shift, or recognition of some of the broad ways that meaning emerges from the interrelationships between signs in games, not through the signs by themselves.

Some of this sounds a little like the operational logics and unit operations discussed by Wardrip-Fruin, Mateas and Bogost. But there is a mass of work in semiotics that feels like it would be useful.

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Week 207

By on October 24, 2010 in weeknotes

In a couple of discussions with people (f2f and on the interwebs) here has been some confusion about what weeks I’m counting in my week notes. I made the decision in my first weeknote outing to count from the first week on the job as an academic. This blog is meant to be about my entire academic journey, not just the work on the PhD. Although most of my head space is taken up with the PhD at the moment.

Last week was coloured by great sadness as on Monday I went to Pete Ferne‘s funeral. The Web Developers Conference is happening again this coming week, and I keep thinking about how I got Pete in at the first one to help kick it off. He was happy to help out with anything and everything and such a shining example of what web-geekhood can be and achieve. Bristol – and I think I can specifically say Bristol because he was so very focussed here – lost a great person far too soon.

This week I’ve been thinking through some of the ramifications and differences between structuralism and marxism/culturalism. Most important for me is the way they relate culture and experience.

On the teaching front. Fed back to all the third year project students on their project ideas. The most popular project clusters are either HTML5 and mashups. Most of the HTML5 projects are working with video, and there have been a couple of interesting APIs surfaced in the mashup projects. Sadly only managed to get one person to do an Arduino project. Will have to try harder to encourage more PComp stuff for next year.

Next week will be my anniversary. Four years as an academic. Soon this will be the longest job I’ve held down. Scary.

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Week 206

By on October 20, 2010 in weeknotes

Attempting to get back into weeknotes again. Third week of teaching for the year. The AR travel game project is going very well. PhD taking a back seat this week, dropping behind on the writing commitments.

Marxism has dominated my thoughts for the week. Both through the readings this week in the Critical Debates module I’m taking and also through heading along to a UCU union meeting. Marx’s legacy is amazing, as the philosopher who has had the biggest impact on history. More people have probably died because of his name than any other, possibly more than for any other religious figure. Sobering when dealing with the rest of his thinking.

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Week 184

By on May 16, 2010 in weeknotes

The Pomodoro system is really helping me out. This week has been much more productive than normal I think, or at least I can look back on exactly what I have achieved. The technique really seems to do two things for me. First, that it does really help me focus on one thing at a time. Secondly, and I think most importantly, makes me aware of how little I can actually do in a day. Which might sounds negative at first, but is vital for long term planning, and mental well being.

More of less finished my PhD progression report and prepped my talk for this week’s Gesture, Technology and Play symposium. Completing the two of those has made me quite excited, galvanized and enthusiastic about my overall PhD project and academic life.

Was interviewed for Fry’s English Delight. Talked about the future of keyboards in light of touch, gesture, mobility and our changing relationship to serialized text. Should really write up my notes from that.

Went to London and saw this beautiful installation at the Barbican.

Also popped in and saw the wonderfully chaotic Tate 10 year anniversary celebrations.

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Week 183

By on May 9, 2010 in weeknotes

It has been a while since I’ve written anything, due to a potent and potentially dangerous combination of workload and procrastination. However I’ve just started using the Pomodoro technique last week, and it is really paying dividends already.

The thing that really got me enthusiastic was Cirillo’s contextualizing it through Bergson, Minkowski and Becoming. Call me a philosophy snob, but it just rung more true than all the efficiency chat around GTD.

So far it has done two really important things. Firstly it does keep my mind on the tasks I’ve got, but more importantly, the granular day planning makes me very aware of what I can actually, reasonably, achieve. Which is always a lot less than I think I can do.

For example, right now I’m in the middle of writing my RD1 progression report for my PhD and I’ve been pomodoro-ing it from beginning to end. The draft took about twice as long as I had originally planned, which became quite apparent very early on. So I’ve been able to plan around that. It is obviously having a knock on effect elsewhere, but not to the extent that it is driving me crazy like all the other writing projects I’ve had.

The Pomodoro thing is making me break it down into planned sections, as well as making me take breaks to think about things. It does help me focus, both through the little, crunchy blocks of time and with the enforced breaks. All up it has a lot in common with a micro-Scrum sort of a process.

My biggest concern is that it has a silly name. I now have to say to people that “I’m just off for a couple of Pomodoros.” Maybe if they were Bergsons I would be happier.

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Week 175

By on March 14, 2010 in weeknotes

Went along to the Computation Turn and presented my paper on Patterns in the Digital Humanities. The keynotes from Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich are online there as videos.

The one major thing I came out of it with was realizing that recognizing shapes is not the same as recognizing patterns. Most of the time when someone says they see patterns in data sets and visualizations, they see shapes in the data, not patterns.

Also the HEAT workshops keep progressing. Still looking into behavior change through both mobile devices and serious gaming as part of that.

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