Twitter II

I have been using twitter for few weeks already. I have read some people refer to it as a community, as utility, as a broadcasting tool. I am still intrigued by it: it is a tool, a medium, to create communities and foster conversations. In many cases, groups of friends and colleagues have created those communities and continue conversations that began in living-rooms, coffee shops, conferences, and offices. There are a number of people like me who began without particular friends or colleagues and navigate the Twitter landscape looking for communities and conversations (the way we do it when we first go to a conference in our discipline or to a party where we do not know most of the people): it is not easy to find those communities and conversations——one person I was following blocked her postings after I asked her about the Argentinian group Les Luthiers. Most people I have reply to have answered and added me to their list of followers but that is usually the extent of it, and that is just fine. So far I liked it but I am still at large.

Blogging your personal life

Blogs seem to have opened this incredible opportunity for almost everybody with a computer to write about almost everything and "publish" it. Those in their 20s, people who have finished college recently and are now at the beginning of their professional lives, seem to have embraced blogs and social networking fully (not that people in their 30s and 40s have not done so themselves but I am guessing there are more people in their 20s blogging than those in their 30s and 40s). They are experimenting with this medium and finding out the ethical and political consequences of their blogging. Ms. Gould tells about her tribulations as she exposed her life and with it the life of others, and the consequences of doing it when it becomes part of the circuit of blog commentators. I am struck by the comments in the NYT to her piece: I only read seven or ten (there are over 700 comments) but they were quite nasty and rude. I am wondering if this tell us something about the kind of readerships (perhaps in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity) that follow the NYT as opposed to the readership that follow blogs. Anyway, here is the piece by Ms. Gould.

Commencement 2008

Sunday was graduation day at my institution. It rained and rained and we (students, parents, and faculty) sat throughout the ceremony: some of us shrank a little bit, just enough to make our clothes a little bit looser. The 08 graduates are moving into a complicated world (but, then again, who has not): a war with no end in sight; gas prices rising; food prices also rising; and a dollar weak and weaker. It is a world full of possibilities (like the world we moved in when we graduated, of course): the first African American president; social networkings are beginning to dominate the Internet (and they have embraced them); and the media is becoming medias and networks. I do not know where this generation is going but I am guessing is taking our world into very interesting places. Good luck, Class of 08.

Twitter Moment, Twitter Events

A "Twitter Moment" is an ordinary moment that becomes interesting and public by blogging it; or it is just an ordinary moment that becomes public. Whatever it is, a twitter moment is now a temporal category. I am intrigued by Twitter. I began a week or so ago: I opened my account after reading about a professor who used it in his class. I thought I would give it a try during the Summer and then, perhaps, try it in my seminars in the Fall. Here I am experimenting with Twitter. Most people I have asked about it in my circle of friends and co-workers do not know about it (some have heard about it but nobody knew anything concrete about it), so I am following complete strangers. I am following about 30-something people: I decided to follow people involved in computer and social network activities (investors, journalists, entrepreneurs) to get a sense of what is going on in that part of the world; I follow also people in Colombia (Bogotá) and in California (Bay Area), two areas to which I am particularly attached to; and I am also following journalists and professors (but I have not found many professors yet).

After my short experience with Twitter I can say two things about it. First, Twitter breaks the hierarchies and the borders between people and groups. I am now "listening" to conversations among journalists, entrepreneurs, computer and social networking people, people living in Colombia, California, and Spain. Twitter erases, somehow, the professional and geographical barriers as well as the social, economic, and cultural, and age fences among groups and individual people. Perhaps this is what fascinates me about Twitter. Second, twitter moments and events lack context. It is hard to follow some of the conversations because there is no context in most of the postings. Perhaps making sense of some of the postings would be a matter of learning, for the reader, how to interpret them, and for the author, how to provide clues for the context.

Twitter takes the leveling of the field a step further because it creates a "place" for conversations beyond our disciplines, professions, geographical locations, age, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. This is the direction of social networking——and I am not an expert.

Olbermann: He is right but we are still in the same place. Why?

Journeys and Destinations

I tell my students that their thinking process (in general) do not belong to the papers they write for me: a paper is about (in general) the argument and the evidence, not about their actual thinking process. The kind of thing I am doing here does not belong to a paper about the development of empirical practices at the House of Trade (Casa de la Contratacion) in Seville, Spain between 1520s and 1570s. I am still uncertain about the rules of this (my) blog; I am still uncertain about the rules of my twitter (depapel) postings. I am learning about these tools; I like them, but I still feel I am much more concerned with the thinking process than the result of the process: it is true, however, that I prefer the journey.

A Beautiful Game

Via discurse.net

Our Times or Only This Day?

From the storm in Burma to the civil war(?) in Lebanon, high oil prices, the war (of choice) in Iraq, the political situation in Zimbabwe, the Darfur tragedy, the shaky economy in the USA, the rise in food prices, we are facing difficult times at the global, regional, and local levels. These mega-events, events that seem to be outside our control, come on top (or behind or below) our own personal-size events: a reduced income, cancer, the lost of a job, difficulties at school or at the office, a lover who-is-not such-anymore. Sometimes I began my day with the wrong feet; other, it seems, most of us began our day with the wrong feet. Is there some sort of global crisis taking place before our eyes?

Cutting Down a Tree

My neighbors decided to cut down the tree on their backyard——it had become a hazard. It was a beautiful, tall, old pine tree. I could hear the sawing machines outside while I was working when Lola came running into my studio, “papá, papá, come and see.” “What?” “Ven, ven,” she said as she grabbed my hand and took my flying to the door: they had just cut the top half of the tree and the crane had lifted and put it down in the middle of the street. A number of people cut the branches, while others fed the branches into the chipper, and turned the tree, or at least part of it, into mulch. I did not see what happened with the logs. Lola and I were outside for few minutes while we witnessed this event. All of it while in North Carolina, Clinton was losing and Obama was winning the election and becoming (I believe) the next presidential candidate for the Democratic party. A tree went down in Macondo, NY, and a great candidate is moving closer to the nomination: life never goes on the same.

The Rest on the Rise

Are we witnessing the Rise of the Rest? Are we witnessing a reconfiguration of historical forces (political, social, cultural, and economic forces)?

"Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories."

To this list I would add the USA's (decreased) international standing. In the American countries (for instance, south of Mexico), the influence of the USA has been historically very strong. Today, it is not longer the case. Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador and Argentina had been moving slowly outside the influence of the USA, in particular, during the last eight years. The only exception to this pattern is Colombia, which is closely linked to the USA via drugs (and so Colombia and the USA share a common problem).

Then the USA is beginning to shed its superpower cloak not only in symbolic terms (the tallest building and the largest mall) but in concrete terms (the waning of its influence in Asia and Latin America). It is still a military superpower: but there are limits to the use of this power (a lesson learned? in Iraq). It does not mean that the US is not a power anymore. On the contrary, it is still a power but a power among other (emerging) powers: in a sense, we are going back to normal (balance of powers as oppose to a superpower): the Rest on the Rise.

Oil, War, and Strategies

The US War on Terrorism seems to be part of a larger strategy to control (or have military access to) oil and gas fields in the Middle East and Central Asia (the Greater Middle East) by establishing small air bases in that area. The Manas Air Base, in Kyrgyzstan, serves as a model of the bases the US is establishing there:

"at Manas Air Base, nestled in a valley surrounded by the snowcapped, 12,000-ft. peaks of the Ala-too Mountains (..., s)ome 1,100 airmen are stationed at the base, which lies east of the city of Bishkek. Since 2001, the strategic air hub has executed some 18,000 missions - ranging from early combat flights by fighter planes during the Afghanistan war to the current logistical runs transporting troops, cargo, and refueling."

As the commentator, Juan Cole, explains: "the US is seeking to encompass the "Greater Middle East" with small bases, each with 1,000 to 3,000 personnel. In emergencies, these bases could quickly swell to 40,000. Like a lily pad, they can "open up" and accommodate a landing frog." "If you include the Caspian region, Tengiz, and the gas reserves in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan along with what is in the Persian Gulf, the vast majority of proven oil and gas reserves are in this circle of
crisis."

What else is new?

Making Sense of a Hispanic USA

The Hispanic population is increasing and the increase between 2006 and 2007 came from births. The economic consequences of this increase are important for the US economy:

"As Americans age and the baby boom generation retires, Hispanics may help buttress the economy and the Social Security system. The average white woman in the U.S. has 1.8 children, which is under the replacement rate of 2.1 necessary to maintain a stable population. Hispanic women, meanwhile, give birth on average to 2.8 children." ""If you are pro-economic growth, you must be pro-immigration and pro-Hispanic, because we don't have the workers," says Donald Terry, a senior official at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington."

The political consequences of this increase are also important:

"Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah [a reference to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's recent declarations], it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin." This conversation already began with the Civil Rights movement; perhaps, what we need is a conversation on class——poverty is at the intersection of many of the disadvantages and lack of opportunities for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos.

The rock in the yard

A few days ago, I was taking the garbage out to the curb. On the yard I found a small rock. I thought it could harm my mowing machine so I took it and put it into the garbage can. I thought whoever put it there, my children playing probably, did not think about the consequences of leaving it there, which is hard because there is always a set of unintended consequences in our acts. This blog’s entry is a consequence of the rock in the yard. I think the entries on this blog are like the rock on my yard left by children (but I do not know for sure) playing around.