Walking the street, earbuds in, and listening to the music from the iPod is not an instance of escapism. Rather it means an augmentation. Mundane life now has a soundtrack.
keep on tracking
nextgen anthropology jobs
The following excerpts are from a 24 August 2009 ↑press release by Gartner, Inc., a consultancy company focussed on ‘information technology research and advisory […],’ on their report called ‘Social science meets technology in next-generation jobs’:
As individuals and organizations progress in their adoption and leverage of the Web, new work streams and needs will arise, resulting in companies utilizing social sciences to fill next-generation technology jobs […].
The sprawling use of consumer technology is spurring the demand for new skills in the workplace. Gartner said that during the next five years, consumer adoption of technology will accelerate as individuals and groups become more comfortable and adept at using it to manage their family, social, and business relationships. At the same time, organizations will struggle to keep pace as they integrate rapidly changing behaviors and technology into an already established business culture and infrastructure. […]
With the volume and diversity of content generated, posted and modified on the Web, there is a rising need for information anthropologists who trace the origin, history, and evolution of Web content. Their objectives range from providing the history of content or information to spotting fraudulent or modified images, audio and texts. Information anthropologists may therefore contribute to legal analysis or to processes where intellectual property or information quality and integrity are at risk. [italics emphasis mine]
The sprawling use of consumer technology is spurring the demand for new skills in the workplace. Gartner said that during the next five years, consumer adoption of technology will accelerate as individuals and groups become more comfortable and adept at using it to manage their family, social, and business relationships. At the same time, organizations will struggle to keep pace as they integrate rapidly changing behaviors and technology into an already established business culture and infrastructure. […]
With the volume and diversity of content generated, posted and modified on the Web, there is a rising need for information anthropologists who trace the origin, history, and evolution of Web content. Their objectives range from providing the history of content or information to spotting fraudulent or modified images, audio and texts. Information anthropologists may therefore contribute to legal analysis or to processes where intellectual property or information quality and integrity are at risk. [italics emphasis mine]
… and what exactly was it, what I am preaching since about six years? Huh? Actually, I am far from being the prophet—a comment on ↑the story at eweek starts: ‘Way to finally wake up and smell the coffee, Gartner. I’ve been using anthropological interviewing techniques to understand the hows and whys (especially organizational culture) for over two decades now. Techniques I learned going out into the field with my mother (Ph.D.) in anthropology. I also know for a fact that several enterprises have used anthropologist and others in the behavioral sciences in product development, and that factoid dates back to at least the early ’90’s (1991 as I recall). […]’
initially via email from John Postill—tnx
40
Since about 100,000 years there is something called ‘human culture’ on Earth. It is save to assume that every single human being having lived since has now and then glanced up to the moon in the skies. But it is just 40 years ago from today that human beings walked on moon’s surface. In the face of that and in spite of all the crap happening every day on our planet, imagine in what kind of phantastic and special times we are living.
life and live
In a way ‘↑Second Life‘ (SL) is the online analogon to a social club of sorts—“↑Quake Live“ (QL) in turn emulates a boxing gym, or any other sports club centred around a competitive pastime. In the end both of course are social institutions, but differ in terms of qualities, differ in culture.
american ties
Did you ever notice that Timothy Price—in Bret Easton Ellis’s ‘American Psycho’—during the cab ride on page five wears a ‘Ralph Lauren silk tie,’ and, after having stepped out of the cab, ‘straightens his Versace tie’ on page eight?
n’importequi
Rémi Gaillard, or: Sapeck is back
This I simply had to repost—already because of the tiny astronauts appearing in my header pics. Beyond that ↑Rémi Gaillard in my opinion simply is ingenious. in the ↑video section of his website ↑nimportequi.com there is a plethora of hilarialities. My favourites at the moment are ‘Rocky is back,’ and ‘Foot 2008,’ not to forget ‘Put it where you want it,’ ‘Decathlon,’ and … well, every single piece is a gem.
Over here in Germany we have some so-called comedians on private TV-stations whom the broadcasters’ marketing people credit with ‘breaking all taboos.’ More often than not this reduces itself to harrassing people in public space, which is most of the time hardly funny, but embarassing … for the ‘comedians,’ not for the people.
Rémi ‘harasses’ people in public space, too—and I love it, when the French police comes into play—, but what sets him far apart is the fact, that his pieces are intelligent to the core. If you have seen Stallone’s ‘Rocky,’ then watch Rémi’s take on it, and you’ll get what I mean.
Besides the category ‘funny movies,’ there is another one, the ‘↑impostor movies.’ In this genre Rémi also is perticularly sucessful, up to mingling himself amongst the players of the winning team of the 2002 French football cup. After the game Rémi celebrates with the players on the field, is congratulated by then president of France Jacques Chirac, and finally is interviewed as a player by a TV-journalist, autographs a football, and all.
All in all Rémi is in perfection tradition of the art group the ↑Incoherents, including the prince of pranksters, Eugène ‘Sapeck’ Bataille, who were on the road during the late 19th century.
Thanks a lot, KerLeone, for finding this.
two bits
KELTY, CHRISTOPHER M. 2008. ↑Two bits: The cultural significance of free software. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mandatory.
top 100 anthropology blogs
… and some reminiscences of the world’s first anthropological weblog
It doesn’t matter if you’re studying capuchins in South America or the social interactions in American college bars, there is a blogger out there who shares your interests. University students, academics, professors and those who just love anthropology have helped to create a great assortment of online discourse about the field. We’ve compiled a ↑list of 100 that are definitely worth a read.
The list compiled by Christina Laun definitely is worth a read, especially as it is structured and commented. What strikes me the most is how much ‘the world has changed’ since ↑KerLeone and me started out with the ↑Ethno::log—which, as of this very moment, is online for 2714 days. ‘Weblog,’ let alone ‘blog,’ were all but household words back then, nobody knew what the heck we were talking about. The original plan was to not just have the Ethno::log hosted on the university server, but to set up a complete weblog server there—for all social sciences and humanities in our house—, using the ↑antville software. It took us countless e-mails, phone calls, and lengthy face-to-face conversations to explain what we wanted to do to the university’s guardians of the IT-infrastructure. Finally we succeeded, and the ‘steering committee’ I took in a flush … once it held one of its rare meetings. Then the domain giantville.lmu.de indeed was created. The name was a strike of genius—at the same time reminiscent of Sir Isaac Newton’s famous saying ‘We are standing on the shoulders of giants …,’ pointing to the fabulous software which should be used, starting with an abbreviation of ‘Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute’ [Institutes of social sciences and humanities], containing the contrast beween ants and giants, and being generally catchy. Alas, the software never got installed. The whole project fell prey to the slowly grinding mills of bureaucracy, and to the fact of the IT staff being chronically overworked, to say the least. The domain lay idle for quite a while, then vanished. To be honest, we also had lost interest, once we realized how tedious and futile it is to explain a ‘vision’ to an institution of that size. And we had lost a lot of time and nerve. A lot.
KerLeone then quickly managed to get space within original antville, and there the Ethno::log saw the light of day, and still is there today. From start on it was planned to be an open weblog—everybody who registers can post content, and in English, although early on even a ↑French posting dropped in. Nevertheless for a long span of time KerLeone and me virtually were the only contributors. We thought English was the barrier for our German-native-speaker students and colleagues, so we decided to allow any language. But the Ethno::log never took off the way we had envisioned—at least in my opinion. It spawned a lot of interest in weblogs within anthropology, for sure. If I get the story right, the now famous, and fabulous, ↑anthropologi.info was inspired by the Ethno::log, and KerLeone pointed Lorenz to using weblog-software instead of static html-pages. But our presumptuous dream was that the Ethno::log should develope into the gravitational center of anthropology online, or at least within the blogosphere [lol] … this now is ↑Savage Minds, I guess.
Yesterday Christina put online her list of the top 100 anthropology blogs—and the Ethno::log ain’t among them. Actually, it can not be, because nowadays it sports German content almost exclusively. But today it is true, that for virtually every anthropologically graspable topic or issue, ‘there is a blogger out there who shares your interests.’ Ain’t that great?
Hell, we were pioneers ;-)
100
the turk
manuscript-day 209 of 100
The history of mechanical calculators is far more outbranching, and the whole story is important for understanding, that what a computer does and is based on, is mathematics, and mathematics only. The devices presented so far—from the ‘Antikythera Mechanism’ to Hahn’s calculator—are of tremendous importance for humankind in general, as history then shows. Accordingly they fascinate the elite-circle of scientists of their times. But they harbour no direct meaning for those not ‘in-the-know,’ because in the end, they can ‘just’ calculate, ‘nothing more.’ They are not programable and thus can not combine their calculation powers in order to cope with tasks beyond reckoning—tasks which can be grasped and understood by people who are not astronomers, mathematicians, or savants in general. Tasks which can gain meaning in everybody’s quotidian life. Like, say, playing a game.
Astoundingly enough, four years before Hahn presents the first working calculator mastering elementary arithmetic, and 67 years before the first design for a programable machine, an apparatus, which seems to do exactly that, appears. In 1770 Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804) presents the ‘Automaton Chess Player’ at Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna, and impresses Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (1717-1780). The machine consists of a table-high wooden cabinet with a chessboard on top, plus the head and torso of an antropomorphic puppet dressed up like a byzantine nobleman. Hence it quickly becomes known as ‘The Turk.’ Before every performance, von Kempelen opens the doors of the cabinet, showing off an intricate clockwork mechanism inside. Then he announces, that The Turk is ready for a challenger. The machine not only proofs that it can perform the knight’s tour, but although shows to be a particularly strong chess player. During his 80-year career of being displayed in Europe and America it flawlessly defeats a plethora of players—among them so prominent opponents like Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821) and Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)—until it is destroyed in a fire in 1854. Alas, The Turk is a hoax. A fine one, indeed, but a hoax nevertheless.
In fact not some ingenious clockwork mechanics ‘play’ chess, but expert chessplayers hidden inside the ‘machine,’ controlling the movements of the puppet. (Levitt 2000, Standage 2002) The Turk is not equipped with artificial intelligence, rather it is a mechanical medium relaying interaction between human beings. When inside The Turk nobody knows that you are a grandmaster.
The sentence is equally true for the doings of a French chess master called Mouret in the 1820s in London, for Charles A. Hopper’s ‘Ajeeb,’ sometimes dubbed ‘The Egyptian,’ first presented in 1868, and ‘Mephisto’, invented by prosthesis maker Charles Gumpel in 1878. All those ‘machines’ are imitations of The Turk—Mephisto at least partially being powered by electricity. Ajeeb is the most succesful of the epigonal lot, touring Europe and America for 60 years. Rumour has it, that from 1894 to 1904 it is operated by US-American high-calibre grandmaster Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1872-1906). Only some years later the first real machine, that indeed can play chess, appears. But before this can happen, another inventor’s work is needed, which happened while the faux chess automatons toured the world.