View from balcony

brisbane1
Originally uploaded by Juzzzy.

My new accommodation on the 27th floor.

AOIR Brisbane, Break-ins and High Rise Apartments

It's the first day of the AOIR 7.0 conference proper. Yesterday I attended the pre-conference workshop for doctoral students. The conference has been interesting so far but unfortunately the experience has been kind of eclipsed by a rather unpleasant incident that happened to me at the motel last night.

Without going into too much detail, a man tried to break in through my window just as I was falling off to sleep. I scared him off by yelling but the combination of the attempted break-in, giving a police statement, the motel not being able to offer me another room and finding out that the man who tried to break in was staying in the room next to me was enough for me to decide to get on out of there as quickly as possible, even though it was 2am. I rang my girlfriend while I was giving the police statement and she was able to get a booking for me at the Hilton for the rest of the night. They were kind enough to offer it to me half price. Today I spent a few hours moving to new accommodation that my girlfriend also found for me. Thank you my darling hero!

I'm now staying in an apartment in a high rise building about 7 minutes walk to the Hilton and right in the centre of town. The apartment is brand spanking new, not even the pillows had been taken out of their vacuum sealed wrapping. I'm surrounded by other high rise towers, both commerical and residential but the height off the ground (I'm on the 27th floor) is rather comforting!!

I would have like to have attended the public lecture at 6:30pm at the conference but had a driving headache and am feeling a bit sad and sorry for myself. A long bath and cup of tea and I'm starting to feel human again. It's a bit of a shame because I would have like to have caught up with some of the other attendees over a dinner but there's still the conference dinner tomorrow night.

Meeting with supervisors

I'm meeting tomorrow with all three of my supervisors. I feel practically but not mentally prepared. I think all the non-phd work I've been doing as well as the fieldwork has distanced me somewhat from my thesis. I'm going to try getting up early and do a bit more work on it in the morning. I re-drafted the AOIR paper and circulated this to my supervisors. I hope to get some constructive comments tomorrow on the paper.

The trees that council planted a little while back are all doing very well. The residents express their pleasure to me when I bump into them on the street. One of the trees has died but I think it was sick when the planted it. The next street activity that I know about is a street wide garage sale that I believe is in the wings for early November. We've been talking about this off and on for about three years and finally it's to happen, perhaps. I hope everyone participates. It will be huge.

Draft AOIR paper - warning: long post, comments welcome

Why Google wants your desktop
A Paper for the AOIR 7.0 Conference

I'm writing this paper using Google's recently acquired Writely, a web word processor. It hasn't crashed yet which is reassuring since Writely is still a Beta version. I'm encouraged to report bugs to the developers by clicking on the "Report a bug" link conveniently located top right of screen right next to the Writely logo. I can see the program design prioritises collaboration features. Five tabs at the top of the screen invite me to Edit, Collaborate, Publish, Blog and make Revisions in that order. To collaborate, I can email others to join me in editing this document. I can make this paper public at the click of a button. Oops I just did that. I wonder how I can reverse it. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to make this document public.

There's a buzz associated with knowing these words are a mere click away from disseminating to a host of destinations but I also feel removed from my desktop environment, and vaguely uneasy, as if the 'page' I'm working on is not really part of my work space and might disappear at any moment. I've been using MS Word since 1990 and despite its many flaws, it's become the main medium through which I write, work and to some degree, think. MS Word is so ubiquitous and pervasive that I don't think of it as a separate program on my computer. It's so much part of the desktop environment that it seems inseparable from the graphic user interface itself. I find it hard to imagine feeling comfortable replacing it with Google's Writely. On the other hand, perhaps it's just a matter of use. Given enough time and practice, I could adapt to this new way of doing things. If it is well-designed and presents enough benefits, then I could overcome my initial resistance and learning curve. At least, that is Jef Raskin's theory. According to Raskin, originator of the Macintosh, and author of The Human Interface,

"When we set about learning any interface feature that is new to us, we proceed in two phases, the first of which gradually grades into the second. In the first, or learning, phase we are actively aware of the new feature, and seek to understand and master it. If that feature is well–designed, and if we use it repeatedly, we eventually enter the desirable second, or automatic, phase, in which we have formed a habit, and use the feature habitually, without thought or conscious effort.”

This process sounds straight forward, but I'm left with a few questions. Firstly, does moving from Word on the desktop to Word on the web really only involve learning a new set of interface features? Word processors are integrally connected to the entire graphic user interface of my computer. The desktop, the organisation of files in folders and the creation of documents by word processors all work together to form a coherent working environment for the production and ordering of complex information.

In terms of the historical development of the personal computer (PC), the development of word processing and PC's is intimately linked. Word processing was one of the first software programs ever designed for the personal computer. With the release of Macwrite on the Apple Macintosh in 1983, and Microsoft Word on the IBM PC in 1984, software versions of word processing soon replaced the dedicated word processor used before PC's became widely available. One might ask how useful a personal computer would be without a word processor?

Ensuring the successful take up from Word on the desktop to Word on the Web seems to me to be more than a matter of mastering a new set of features and incorporating them into my daily routine. To my mind, there is the much broader question of how does a web service such as Writely integrate and work with my overall working environment, as well as the actual practices involved in using the software. I'd go further to say that this working environment is not limited to the computing environment but extends into the social and built spaces of everyday life. Just as sites like the office, home and school are transformed by the incorporation of new technological objects, the development paths of the desktop computer and the word processor are connected to how they fit or don’t fit into these domains.

Building on Raskin’s theory of “learning” and then “automating”, I suggest that technology transfer is more than a matter of mastering a new set of features and incorporating this into my daily routine. It involves at least two other interlocking processes or paths. A model that incorporates all three processes might look something like this:

1/ functionality and design benefits followed by mastering and habituation
2 /overall coherence into a unifying “space” or environment
3/ integration of this environment into their social and physical contexts

These paths are reinforced over time through spatial practices and can be challenged and re-negotiated at any point.

This brings me to the second question I have when considering a transition from Word for the desktop to a web based Word processor such as Writely. Is it, in fact, Google's aim to get users to replace Microsoft Word on the desktop with a web word processor? I'm not a Google insider, so I can only conjecture on recent developments. Certainly, there are a number of indicators to suggest such a trend. Some industry commentators talk about the "web office" and speculate on who's building it, pointing to a range of contenders such as Thinkfree, JotSpot, AdventNet, Silveroffice and 37 Signals. Google, in particular, attracts attention because it is considered to be large enough to gather all the necessary building blocks together to produce something that would rival the offerings of Microsoft Office (references). These commentators point to the recent acquisition of Writely, the release of Google Spreadsheet and Google Calendar and the now established Gmail as being the potential parts of this greater something, a "WebOffice suite". Other industry commentators point to the recent partnership between Google and Sun Microsystems to bring Sun's StarOffice to Google users as another indicator that Google intends to take on Microsoft Word.

There is also Google Apps for Your Domain, a package of programs (email, instant messaging and calendar) that go together with a hosted web site and domain. Microsoft has released its own parallel service OfficeLive offering a comparable array of services. Both bundle a set of communication and collaboration tools together with web and domain hosting and offer it free (at least while in Beta phase) to businesses and organisations, thereby anchoring the online identity of their customers businesses with the critical communication services required for their daily operation.

It's hard to make sense of all of these developments and harder still to make conclusions about what will happen in the future but I'd like to take a speculative position to see if there is some broader trend that can be recognised.

All these recent developments seem to intersect and condense in and around the idea of "the office" and ultimately where this space is located. The meaning of "office" is far from clear. There is no set of defined features or ideas that constitute "the office". Google seems to specifically steer away from using the term, possibly due to its powerful associations with the Microsoft brand. Microsoft first adopted the term in the early 1990's with the release of a new product that combined a number of applications that had previously been marketed and sold separately such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Office bundles, or ‘productivity suites’, as they are referred to by the industry, now also include email and publishing programs.

Although the term “office” is used in a range of ways to describe a number of different technologies, what unites them is the use of the term “office” as a combining metaphor, one that integrates and contains otherwise heterogeneous information and communication functions and activities into a coherent whole. The desktop GUI and office productivity suites together draw on the combining metaphor of “the office” to create a unified work environment. Moreover, this computing work environment “mirrors” or “echoes”, in critical ways, the social and physical context of work and is integrated into it, a folding of one environment into another.

Since the early 1990’s, the association between personal computing in a desktop environment with office productivity suites has been strengthened. In part, this tight coupling is due to the dominance of Microsoft, by far the largest supplier of office productivity suites. Their practical monopoly reinforces the association and also impacts greatly on development, ensuring that the personal desktop environment and Microsoft office both develop in a mutual direction, a classic example of path-dependence. However, in my view, the tight coupling has also to do with the creation of a coherent computing work environment through the use of the office metaphor.

While the desktop environment has proven to be a robust and lasting model, the tight coupling of office suites with the personal desktop computer is potentially destabilized with the emergence of web office suites. Web-based office suites re-situate the space of office activities from the desktop computer environment to a web-based environment, facilitating collaboration and communication in a way that the desktop environment does not. Some commentators argue that the desktop paradigm is challenged by new modes and “flows” of work where collaboration and communication tools become critical; “The Internet, intranets, and email transformed workflows. Globalization and outsourcing dispersed people to satellite offices and partner companies. Collaboration tools became critical” (RedHerring Research).

The idea of the “web office” is not fundamentally new. It references and builds on earlier instantiations and imaginations of it embodied in “the electronic office” or “virtual office”. What I see as significantly different about the current raft of web office suites is the development of web technologies, specifically interactive web applications, to support a total working environment that can perform a similar role to that of personal computers.

In terms of moving users from office suites on the desktop to using them on the web, industry commentators and human interface experts suggest that it is just a matter of getting the right combination of components and the right design. However, in my view, the issue of creating a “unified work environment” and folding this into the social and physical contexts of use is a significant factor that most commentators ignore. Web office suites are bound to personal computers because PC’s make up the environment in which web office suites will be used and are, at present, the main access point for the Web. In some industry circles, this might be described, rather disdainfully, as its legacy. But “the legacy of a new technology” is not just some set of outdated functions or features that one “gets over” in the process of adopting a new set of features or functions. Legacies shape the environment in which a technology emerges and don’t simply disappear with the emergence of something new. Waste, is one of the ways in which modernity deals with its legacy technologies. A technology that is converted to waste can “disappear” and be replaced with a new technology, a process that very much describes our current “upgrade culture”. However, the process of turning something into waste, particular if it involves 400 million Microsoft Office users, is a time-consuming business.

In my view, companies like Google and Microsoft recognise that the future of web office suites are bound to personal computers and that any technology transfer strategy involves more than an upgrade approach. Their approach is to work towards a hybridization of the desktop operating system with a web-based service model. Some indicators of this strategy include the recently released Google desktop, a desktop search application that allows a user to search their own computer as well as the web thereby integrating web and desktop searches. Another indicator of this hybridization is the distribution deal with Dell to pre-install Web and desktop search software on all Dell computers (Zdnet) and the August deal with Real Networks to bundle Google Toolbar and the latest Firefox browser to every download of RealPlayer’s multimedia player.

Microsoft is often criticized for being tardy with moving Office online, critics arguing that Microsoft has been feasting on its existing desktop monopoly (Red Herring). However, another way of viewing Microsoft’s strategy is to examine the logic behind their OfficeLive suite, which is directed towards building on existing installations of Microsoft Office, not replacing them. Microsoft promotes this on their OfficeLive website when they write, “these Web-based applications can be customized to automate your daily tasks — they even integrate with popular and familiar Microsoft products such as Microsoft Office Outlook, Excel, and Word.” (OfficeLive website).

In conclusion, current trends suggest that there is a potential destabilization of the tight coupling that has existed for over 15 years between the desktop environment and office suites. Web office suites can offer, arguably for the first time, a similar level of functionality to desktop versions with the improvements that have come about to interactive web applications. Additionally, web office suites offer many benefits over their desktop equivalents in terms of supporting collaboration and communication. However, while many industry commentators and HCI experts contend that its just a matter of getting the right blend of components and design and replacing the desktop model with web based office suites, my view is that the greater challenge is the drawing together of all the heterogeneous information and communication functions and activities into a coherent system and the integration of this system into existing social and physical contexts. The battle over the office, if we are to use such characterizations, is not a battle being played out between Microsoft representing the side of the offline desktop model and Google representing the side of the online web-based model. Both “sides” are working towards the convergence of the desktop with the web. The battle is over who shapes this hybrid operating system of the future and how it’s folded into the world.

Intelligent design or "Argument from Design"

Did you ever wonder about the history of intelligent design? I was very interested to discover in Richard Dawkins book "The Blind Watchmaker" that the idea of intelligent design was perhaps most famously articulated in 1802 by a certain 18th century theologian William Paley writing about fifty years before Darwin;

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever; nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there."

A quick look at wikipedia suggests this teleological line of reasoning went back much further in a Western tradition to Greek philosophers and was reiterated in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae.

The Paley quote is carefully selected by Dawkins who goes on to say in the introduction of his book "The Blind Watchmaker", "Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker."

Teacher found

Thanks to a recent post, I think I've found a teacher to take the "Culture & Technology" class. A colleague of mine at the CCR indicated his interest in taking the class and I put forward his name to the Acting Program Director. I'm hoping to email the students today to let them know about the new arrangement.

I'm going to try to make some headway on my paper for the AOIR conference. The title of the paper is "Why Google wants your desktop". The problem is I'm not completely sure that what I had in mind when I wrote the abstract is something that I want to write about now but I'm going to try to draft an outline of the paper prontisimo...

Observation sessions and teaching

I had another observation session this morning at the Council. I've completed nine so far and have six to go at the Council and another four at the Telco in Melbourne. They've been going very well but it's difficult to organise all the data. I'm going to concentrate on this side of things over the next week or so. I have a joint meeting with my three supervisors on September 21st and I feel a little all over the place with my Phd. It's not that I haven't been working hard, it's just a bit fragmented at the moment and I have been doing quite a lot of non-PhD work. I'd really like to aim to have all my observations completed at the Council before the joint supervisory meeting.

I'm considering doing one more class for the "Culture and Technology" program. I don't feel that I have to but if I hear the Uni hasn't found anyone by Monday I'll think about doing this Wednesday's class on Intimate Machines 2. This would mean the Uni need only cover one lecture and if the class is cancelled for the following Wednesday then the students only miss out on one class. I must admit, I was shocked to discover that the Program Director has gone overseas and forwarded the coordination on to an Acting Program Director. I didn't even know he was going overseas and then received an auto-reply to an email this morning asking if he'd had any success finding someone to take the classes.

It's a gorgeous Sydney Spring day. The jasmine is out and the wind is warm. I'm excited about doing some work on the house. We finally got our development application in just over a week ago. The work we are proposing is pretty minor compared to most renovations. I'm hoping we don't have difficulties finding a builder that's prepared to do a small job. It's certainly not the "gut and smeg" that you commonly see done on inner city terraces - but it does involve demolishing the kitchen and bathroom.

Dilemma, guilt etc

Of course, I should have expected that I'd be asked to continue teaching. I received a call this morning and the regular lecturer is unable to return for the next two classes which brings us up to the semester break. I took the teaching on in a moment of spontaneity and impulsiveness but was clear that I could do no more than three weeks of teaching. Now that the time has come to respond to the request to do more teaching, I feel terribly guilty. I don't want to let the students down but I really don't think I can manage more teaching. It's the preparation time involved in each class, particularly in the lecture. I've suggested that the Program Coordinator look for a guest lecturer for each of the two weeks remaining before the break. I hope this works out.

The readings for this week are Heidegger's, "The Question Concerning Technology" and Paul Virilio's "The Information Bomb". I was hoping to get on to looking at some more recent theories of technology and society like social constructivism/social shaping. I think there is too much weight on the substantive theory. However, the case study of the smart card that I introduced last week stimulated many interesting questions, not least, the notion that the smart card is not necessarily something that is pre-determined and inevitable. This leads directly to a consideration of the social constuctivist aspect of technology. Perhaps I'll start off with this in my lecture tomorrow.

"Culture and Technology"

I returned from Melbourne to be swept up with teaching a course at UTS called "Culture and Technology". Haven't had time to scratch myself. Just before flying down to Melbourne, the Program Coordinator of Writing and Cultural Studies at UTS rang me to request that I take this course for three weeks. The regular lecturer had received news about a family tragedy and had to drop everything and go. Crazily, I said yes and within a few days of returning from Melbourne found myself teaching this course. I've really enjoyed the class, and it's a great program. It's probably the main reason I agreed to take it. I looked at the outline and thought "I'd like to take a course like that". It's been great but I've spent a lot of time preparing for the classes. I have one class to go. Last week was on cyborgs, this week on Foucault and Crary, next week on Heidegger. I'm going to feel sad saying goodbye to the students so quickly. I feel very fondly towards them and I've only been teaching them for two weeks.

Best dumpling noodle soup ever!

I just had the most delicious dumpling noodle soup in a little side alley off the main drag of Chinatown in Melbourne, aka Little Bourke St. I arrived just in time. It was packed but there were little odd spots for single noodlers to squeeze into. By the time I left, there was a queue of hungry looking after workers snaking out the door and around the corner. The dumplings were mushroom and vegetable. I'm vegie and always in search of interesting and tasty vegie meals. They were devine. Best dumplings. Did I say they were good? They were superb and obviously a Melbourne secret.

Melbourne

Flying down to Melbourne tomorrow to start the fieldwork on my second case study. I'm staying there for two days and flying back on Friday evening. So much going on at the moment on various fronts. Also have family visiting from Israel at the moment and this weekend is packed with social activities. I don't know whether I feel prepared for Melbourne or not. In some ways I feel less nervous because I've notched up quite a bit of experience now conducting interviews. However, I don't really know how compatible my tools; interview questions and diary etc, are for this particular organisation. I've tried to design them generically enough to work for both organisations but I'm not sure...

I finally managed to send off my 8 page summary to the AOIR conference organisers for the Doctoral Colloquium. My understanding is that these will be distributed to the other students participating in the Colloquium. I really need to start drafting the paper for the conference.

AOIR conference

A while back I submitted an abstract to the conference of the Association of Internet Researchers Conference (AOIR) which is being held in late September in Brisbane. I also applied to attend the Doctoral Colloquium on the day before the Conference. To my surprise my abstract was accepted but I was put on the second round offers list for the Colloquium (I thought it might turn out the other way around). I had just started to fret about writing the conference paper and then received an email just last week saying that I've been accepted into the Doctoral workshop in the second round offer. I had a brief crisis feeling a bit overwhelmed by the combined demands but have decided to push on and give them both a go. When I looked closely at the schedule for the Colloquium, each student is presenting for only 20 minutes with an additional 15 minutes set aside for discussion. This seems reasonably manageable and it would be beneficial to receive feedback from a community of researchers who are theoretically working in a similar field. I've set aside today, after I finish blogastinating, to complete the requirements for the Doctoral Colloquium. I have to write an 8 page summary of my phd research which will be circulated to the other members of the Colloquium.

My initial motivation for participating in the AOIR conference probably comes down to my search for a community of academics doing likeminded research, something in the field of social research of technology and technology use. However, I'm not sure there are any networks/communities that are a perfect fit. This conference primarily attracts researchers doing projects on the Internet. My supervisor did say to me that she felt that the AOIR crowd defined this pretty loosely but I still feel that my research is a bit peripheral to this field's self-defined parameters. I'm on the AOIR mailing list and from the posts, I have not discerned any researchers who are interested in the field of technology and work. The use of catch terms like the Internet, CMC, CSCW and SST by communities of academics can be very confusing. These terms are significant key terms drawing together many of these researchers into coherent networks and are often fiercely defended and yet they don't stand up to very much scrutiny or hold the same meanings outside the ongoing circuits of academics attending conferences around the world.

Mid fieldwork

I've completed 13 interviews and 2 observation sessions and have received 2 diaries back so far. My trip to Melbourne is fast approaching too. I haven't booked any accomodation yet so have to get on to that. I'm staying there for 2 nights and 2 days while I conduct the interviews at my research site there. I realised that the organisation of my method means that I need to make an additional trip to Melbourne in a few weeks time to collect the diaries and conduct the observation sessions. I've considered altering the sequence so that I do it all in the two days that I'm there but not only will this be a real stretch timewise but I think it will be a bit overwhelming. As it is, I'm conducting 3 interviews on one day and two on the other. I'm hoping that Sarah can come with me on the second trip and we can make a long weekend of it.

I'm really happy with the material generated so far. The 2 returned diaries are packed full of interesting snippets and details. I'm impressed with how much thought has gone into them. Yesterday I picked up a book at Gleebooks, "Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes". Not that I have any shortage of data but I feel that there are many interesting observations in and around the actual contact that I have with participants that can add to my overall data. I've been a bit ad hoc though with my method of notation and felt that a more systematic approach could really assist me. What I like about this book is that it touches on some of the theory behind writing as part of the ethnographic process but is very practical in its orientation.

Qwerty is back and getting stronger every day. She's also hungry as a wolf and gives me those starving eyes all day long. Her appetite is greatly increased by the medication she is on for her autoimmune condition. Oh woah is me, it is difficult to resist them.

Qwerty's coming home

My dog is coming home from vet hospital today. We are picking her up in an hour and I can't wait to bring her home. Last Tuesday morning she looked a bit under the weather and was off her food. By Wednesday night she was seriously ill and by Thursday morning, she had a blood transfusion. It turned out she has an autoimmune illness which means that her white blood cells were destroying her red blood cells. This made her seriously jaundiced and anaemic. She is now on immune suppressant medication and her red blood cell level has been steadily rising since last Thursday. We've been visiting daily and praying to all the dog gods in the universe that she would make a speedy recovery. In addition to some prayer, we thought that we'd mix it up a bit and so we've been sending good vibes and asking all our friends to think positive thoughts for Qwerty every day. We have many neighbours, the lady in the cafe around the corner, many friends and family all sending her positive thoughts. Thanks everybody...

This did put a bit of a spoke in the field work but not a major one. I had to reschedule a few interviews but I've completed six so far and have another four arranged for this week. I've had a few more recruits come through from the Council and I rearranged my trip down to Melbourne for August 10th. This is probably a better time anyway since I'll be a good way through my Council field work by then.

In the thick of field work

I can't believe almost a month has passed since my last post. The title of the paper I gave just over a month ago - "Entering the field: researching everyday office computing" was most apt. I really was on the cusp of launching into the field work. Soon after giving the paper, I travelled down to Melbourne to visit the organisation where I'm conducting research on a new mobile phone solution. I had a whirlwind trip going there and back in a day. It was quite unsettling arriving in Melbourne in the morning and coming back that afternoon, although I did manage to orient myself successfully enough to buy a pair of boots after my meeting with the staff of the organisation. Melbourne really does have the best shoe stores.

Since returning from Melbourne I worked on the design of the office technology diary and got good feedback from a range of people. I tested it on Sarah for a week and am only disappointed that I can't include her diary in the overall research.

Over last weekend I revisited the interview questions I drafted for my ethics application way back in August last year. I did some reworking of the structure and wording of the questions and started interviewing the staff from my Sydney based organisation this week. I've conducted three interviews so far and I feel that they are going very well. Of course the process raises all sorts of new questions and there's alot to do negotiating the field work process, alot more than I anticipated. I'm very excited to finally be in the field.

Paper over

I presented my paper on Friday to the other postgrads and I'm glad the Research Coordinator cajoled us into participating in the 'mock conference' despite it falling at a busy time for me. I received some very valuable feedback and didn't feel as nervous presenting as I have in the past. I also found out that one of the other students has used a diary technique and today I'm going to email her and see if I can find out more.

I've received four consent forms from participants at the council who indicated their interest in being involved in the research. I need to follow up on some of the others who haven't sent their consent forms back. This part of finalising the participants and scheduling the fieldwork is really fiddly and takes much longer than you expect. I'm hoping to go down to Melbourne in the next week or two just for the day to visit the Business Development Unit of the Telco. I'm really looking forward to that.

I'm still dreaming about a delicious apple crumble that a friend made for Sal and myself on Saturday night. Mmmmm.....

Writing up draft paper

I'm presenting a paper this Friday on my research to a group of postgraduate students at Uni. Been freaking out about this for about a week. Will spend today trying to bed down the draft. On the field work front, I've received nine positive replies from participants at the Council since the mass email was sent out. The Head of IT is sending out a repeat email today. I have to make a trip to Fisher library tonight. I have six books overdue. I couldn't renew them because I exceeded the number of times I can renew them darn it.

Back to the paper...

Chasing up participants

Both of the organisations I've recruited have sent an email around to staff inviting them to participate in my research study. The text was prepared by me and they put in a few words in support of the project. The day after one of them was sent around I received a flurry of interest with five replies but since then nothing. I think I will have to generate some more interest in the project by going there in person and presenting my project to staff. I've just sent an email through to one of them to try to arrange to do this. The other organisation is in Melbourne and I'm planning on going down there in late May.

Field work in the slow lane

Well I've got my research sites - two to be exact. Both organisations have received my email text to be sent to all the staff in the organisation inviting them to participate in my research but I haven't heard anything back yet in terms of actual replies from participants. It's slightly frustrating not knowing the status of the recruitment within the organisation since this is largely in the hands of the key contacts I have in those organisations. It's a fine line to tread between giving them time to follow through with the tasks at their end and hassling them to get them done...

In the meantime I've been working on the design of the interview and technology diary to be handed out to all the participants. The technology diary is proving to be quite challenging to conceptualise but I do have a template to refer to that is quite a good fit - one of my supervisor's everyday water diaries. Today I have been doing a bit of brainstorming on what it is that I hope the technology diaries will reveal about everyday use of information and communication technology in the office and then break them into themes and exercises that can act as guides for the diary users. I thought I'd try it out on a couple of friends in draft form to see how I can improve it.

Howard's "Political Correctness"

Yesterday, the media reported that Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, criticised the education system for "dumbing down" the teaching of English to children. As The Age article points out, his statements follow his condemnation of how History is taught in schools, made earlier this year. On both occasions he has drawn on similar language claiming education has succumbed to "political correctness", "so-called post-modernism" while shunning "the Classics" and " the importance of dates".

There was a strong, united and articulate response from most educators dismissing Howard's claims as "out of touch" and "simplistic". His comments came across as so ignorant and uninformed they blew in and out of the daily press without gaining much traction.

Howard is lashing out at what he believes to be an easy target - the imagined leftist educators that are out to teach critical thinking. He throws around terms like "political correctness" and "post-modernism" with no understanding of the complexity or history of their meaning but simply as a trigger for conservatives and uninformed members of the public.

It is a tired and see-through tactic that he uses whenever he wants to distract attention away from criticism of the actions of his own government and towards some invented social problem.

Despite knowing this, it is hard to know exactly how to react to these inane statements. Yes, they are tactics of distraction and getting heated up about it means accepting the bait. On the other hand, simply dismissing his statements and moving on seems to somehow give validity to the increasing tendency, not just tendency but official strategy, to identify and frame certain sectors of society as "enemies of the state". It is a finger-pointing exercise and I fear that every instance adds to the environment of fear and hatred that this government relies on to remain in power and to invoke its conservative agenda. I do fear. I fear the consequences.

In the same Age article, John Frow, the head of Melbourne University's English Department, makes the point that Howard is waging a cultural war against a phantom enemy; "This is polemics. This is part of some phantom war he (Mr Howard) is waging against an imaginary enemy". But while his enemies are imaginary, it is this exact lack of definition and clarity that enables and facilitates persecution of others. The others may be vague and shadowy forms that hover under the signs of "political correctness" and "post-modernism" today but become very real figures when the hatred hardens from symbolic to physical actions directed at human lives.