creuser and other more or less stupid neologisms

Of some reason, I have included the buzz-word "prosumer" in one of my in-progress articles that I never seem to be able to finish. I don't like it at all, but there it is referring to private individuals becoming producers of generally accessible content. Producer + consumer and/or professional + consumer equals prosumer. Why not put some other words into the equation as well? Creproconuser. Signifies creative producing consuming users. What's the value of silly combo-words? I think I'll rather write about creative use of media technologies without including such evasive concepts.

bicycle #2

I'm looking for the perfect bicycle. I have one already, it's a solid mtb and I like it a lot. But I need another one, a low-maintenance, comfortbale city-bicycle. I don't have a car and I don't need one. But I need bicycles! And look what I've found: Saint. I don't think I'll find it in the shops in Norway though. Luckily I'm going to visit familiy in Finland in July, and I'm pretty sure I'm bringing this one back home. Happiness!

my best concert memory

I'm importing cd's to my powerbook. Need music to my portable music device (eh, iPod). I've just imported Grant Lee Buffalo's Mighty Joe Moon. I haven't listened to it much lately. But I remember the magic of Grant Lee Phillips playing at Rockefeller in the autumn 1994 - I think it's the best concert I've ever been to. I was 19 and had to go alone as my usually rather music-enthusiastic friends didn't feel like going. That was so their loss. I remember drinking about a bottle of wine with the same friends before going. Sort of nervous to be on my own. I remember meeting another loner at Rockefeller, rather good-looking my age and kind of type. We were friends then and there. Sharing a rather memorable concert. Everything was so right: the music, the lights, the audience and the soft pushes from people around me. Always at the first row, but a little to the left. Look, somebody published the concert playlist.

monday morning surprise

I didn't expect my iPod to arrive until next week. But there it was, waiting for me when I came to work this morning. What a wonderful surprise. Unfortunately I have to wait until I'm home to fill it up with music and photos. I don't consider my old excuses for not buying an iPod to be any good. And I will use it as I'm cruising the roads in Oslo on my bicycle. I promise to be careful though. Free laser engraving: Where Happiness Lives (Magnet)

perspective

"(...) does the other side lie, do others know they are lying, are their conclusions inaccurate because they do not understand as much as we do, are they poorer thinkers than we are, are we simply seeing the same reality in a different way, are their values or emotions getting in the way of understanding, or perhaps are all of us really equally ignorant of the truth?" This, I must say, is a promising introduction to a book. Excerpt is taken from Joel M. Charon's Symbolic interactionism. An introduction, an interpretation, an integration (publisher, amazon). Have I asked the same questions a million times. Charon introduces "perspective" as the concept that may help answer these questions. Of course, this is, after all, a book about symbolic interactionism, about how our truths are shaped by the meanings we encounter through social interaction. Eh, so far I've only read page 1, so I don't know whether I'd recommend it.

take care of presence

In Saved from oblivion Andreas Kitzmann discusses the seemingly random and careless consumption of private photographs. How photographs have typically been given a cursory glance and then put away. I've always been fond of looking back at pictures from the past. I am, after all, a true nostalgic. As such, I don't quite recognize Kitzmann's description of common patterns of consuming photos, but he may very well be right: I guess there is a difference between I and the general We. Next question is obviously: what about digital photographs? We take a lot more photographs, and we bring our cameras with us more often. But how does the digital camera affect practices of archiving photos? It's definitely easy to over-emphasise the significance of services like Flickr. Most people do not archive and share their photos online.

I remember the feeling when I thought I lost all of my Costa Rica photos. I hadn't lost them. But photos are not safe in the digital shoebox of your computer.

iMusic

iTunes Music Store finally in Norway. Perhaps no big deal, but I can certainly get used to this. First four songs downloaded were: Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah (though I think I prefer it by Leonard Cohen), Neil Diamond: Both sides now (!!!? Yes, I have a kitch soft side, and no, I don't prefer Joni Mitchell's original version ), M.I.A.: Amazon, The Orb: Little fluffy clouds. Rock, pop, dance, electronic.

communication conference in Amsterdam

I want to go to the First European Communication Conference (the conference web-site didn't work very well with safari, but seems fine in Firefox) in Amsterdam in November. I have an almost finished paper called "Conceptualising personal media", which would have been perfect for the conference (I've been writing about this paper before). But I've decided to do this the hard way: to write an abstract for a paper I have not yet written (which is very common I guess). Deadline for sending in abstracts is 15th of May. I searched for online resources for writing good abstracts. These tips from the linguistics department at University of California seem good enough.

the not so perfect online world

"Magasinet [Dagbladet's feature-magazine] has studied the Norwegian reality. And found a lawless eldorado for adults looking for sex with children." Yes, this is another article about the dangers of the online world, and the threat it represents for children. The article is based on Dagbladet-journalist Rønnaug Jarlsbo's experiences. She pretended to be 13 years old and had to deal with explicit invitations from old men pretending to be 48 when they are in fact 60 (huh, what's the point? Pretending to be her dad's age, and not her grand-dad's?). It's an uncomfortable article, and I felt rather uneasy reading it. Is this something I ignore in my research? Then again: I don't think so: I'm interested in my informants, and these are not stories they could have told me.

Jarlsbo met a couple of men after chatting with them privately online. From the very beginning they openly told her about their intentions with meeting her. Most young girls (or boys) would never agree to meet these men. I'm not going to deny that it's a serious problem that some would, and that trying to avoid it from happening is important. But Jarlsbo's article is so one-sided. If I had been a mother with little competence on online interaction, this article would have scared me immensely. I can easily see myself banning my imagined children from using the Internet. Which would've solved nothing.

norwegian-finnish

Yesterday I finally finished Kari Hotakainen's bestselling book Juoksuhaudantie. In Finnish. It has been difficult but well worth it. I'm sort of bilungual: mom is from Lahti/Finland and made sure that my sisters and I learnt Finnish. In January 1995 I left my hometown Tønsberg. 10 years without using Finnish on an everyday basis is no good. I definitely need to make an effort to keep up my language skills. It's so sad to loose languages. Especially when they're part of who you are.

makeover

Rather safe choices: white, grey and orange as the main new colours on my site: I'm not exactly taking any chances. I might do more changes, but this will do for now.

edit: Oh, I didn't consciously copy Jean's colours.

comments gone

I've lost all of my previous comments. Or Comment This has. Gone. Blogger's own comment-system will do. Wonder whether I'll turn off the comments on old posts? My 15 months old weblog now has no comments at all. The evanescence of the digital world.

Have a look at Josh Leo's vlog-post. It's sort of relevant (Even e-mailed me the link).

research or music?

Today is deadline for submitting abstracts to the Nordic Conference on Media and Communication Research, which will take place in Aalborg, Denmark from August 11 through August 14. I haven't been able to decide whether I'll go or not. It seems that everybody from IMK are. Now I know I'm not. I only now realised the conference collides with Øyafestivalen. Research conference or music festival? Both are a lot of fun of course, but no way I'm skipping the best music-festival in Norway. Besides, I've already bought my ticket.