remember me

José van Dijck's article 'From shoebox to performative agent: the computer as personal memory machine' (New media and society 7 (3)) is well worth reading if you are interested in questions concerning digital memories and the self. The author discusses a handfull of examples of actual and conceptual memory machines and criticizes them for understanding computers as jukeboxes of memory. Her point is that we need to examine the performative nature of digital technologies, i.e. the role of technologies in the active staging of memory. The act of recording our everyday lives shape the nature of remembering.

I can hardly write about self writing/self recording without mentioning memory. I have been thinking in terms of archiving life and performing and constructing selves, but this article explicitly stated the obvious. Our memories are not neutral. We shape and construct them (with our minds or with technology). And memories in part shape and construct us.

preacher man

Saul Williams at John Dee
Originally uploaded by Marika.

Yesterday I experienced Saul Williams in concert for the second time this year. I really didn't want it to end. I love that he dares to be political, that he dares to say things that so easily sounds like cliches, yet he seems to be so serious about it. I love a rapper with sympathetic perspectives on the world, on fairness, on gender on race. And of course, the actual music is the coolest thing about him. "Smile so I can see you".

software for qualitative data

I've downloaded TAMS Analyzer, an open source program for coding and analyzing qualitative data such as interview transcripts. I've handcoded and analysed interviews before, but TAMS is certainly a much more flexible and effective way to work with the interviews. Linda Duits phd-student in Amsterdam, originally recommended MaxQDA, but it's only for PCs. However, I can't believe TAMS is a much worse option, the possibilities seem endless, and the program provides much more than I will ever need to use.

My analyses will now be even better! Though, first I have to spend (quite) a few hours (a few days actually) to code the interviews.

Holberg prize

Remember the pupils from Glemmen upper secondary school that I've visited a couple of times? Well, one of the groups (those who were researching what media youth use to develop friendships and love-affairs) were picked out as one of three finalists. Which meant I was invited to Bergen with them to attend the school-project prize-ceremony and the big thing: we went to the Holberg-prize party on Tuesday and the gala-dinner yesterday in honour of Jürgen Habermas, the Holberg Prize Laureate 2005. A true academic super-star with an immense influence on modern thought. How strange to meet him, not to mention to observe how interested he appeared to be in the pupils' school-projects. Well I'm shy and I only observed him from a distance (except for the hand-shake before the gala-dinner). However at the Holberg-prize party on Tuesday, Camilla (one of the pupils) had no problems of going over to the Laureate and ask whether she could take a photo of him with her phone (the photo above). Anyway, I had a lovely couple of days with the Glemmen-people.

So who should be nominated for next year? The prize is approx. €575,000/$700,000 and "will be awarded to scholars who have made outstanding, internationally recognised contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social science, law or theology, either within one of these fields or through interdisciplinary work. Through his/her scholarly work, the prizewinner must have had a decisive influence on international research in the field, for instance through the development of new theory, knowledge or insight, through making new use of existing theories or through the methods used."