It’s been a very long time since I paid mind to this website and space I carved out for myself some time ago in graduate school. I myself am unsure what I even want to do with this corner of the internet. Will I just blither here? Will I position it to find jobs and creative outlets? Will I use it as a community hub?

I’ve updated my C.V. to reflect some of more more recent happenings and achievements - I have due to outstanding, relentless health issues and a crisis of the mind like no other, stepped away from corporate environments. It was not my proudest moment nor my most professional. Two near run-ins with death have me rethinking just about everything I thought I understood or held dear in my heart.

All that being said, I suppose it is in the ashes of things that I’ll grow something new. As my body struggles, I’ve found my way into creative endeavors that feed me deeply. I’ve begun teaching again which is a great return to something I always wanted to be doing. It feels nice to teach technical writing from the perspective of someone seasoned, rather than years ago when I had just begun that journey. Teaching feels authentic now, fraud syndrome cannot touch me. Similarly, where I was quite shy about performing before, almost dying has made it simpler to see that I have nothing to be scared of. Most certainly not my peers or strangers in an audience. These places I have become not fearless, just far less afraid.

Lots is brewing for the year in its beginning moments. I am almost hesitant, standing on the precipice of the unknown but I’ll be sure to try and report back as I witness and experience on my way down into the next chapter of my life. Cheers until then!

As I continue to drown in my thesis work (spatiality/architecture/human behavoir), like any other grad student, my mind wanders around. Taking some theory with it to throw at other weird and unrelated life concepts. This week I played around with the concept of non-physical/abstract phenomena becoming Objects depending on their context.

An example of this is Peace or Contentment. We often say that we're looking for it, finding it or approaching it. We emphasize the journey we experience in order to reach Peace or Contentment in a way that physicalizes the properties of which we seek. Peace or Contentment are a location we must reach, and if we fail to reach it, we may be left feeling shame or guilt. Adversely, when we do "find it", the gratification is likely highlighted because you, now have or own the thing. The phrase "happy place", although useful in so many facets of therapy and self affirmation, can be inherently dangerous to the healing process occurring if that place is never quite reached - or is quickly “left" like a vacation spot.

However, rather than ascribing to the notion that Peace can be lost, or happiness is in a person - how can we leverage language to build a framework that encourages graciously accepting the spectrum of experience?

Love is another non-physical / abstract phenomena that typically becomes an object through our perceptions of it. We are always seeking or trying to find it, as if the *it* (Love) is an object one could simply pick up at the store, or stumble upon at the park. We sometimes say "it (Love) hit me like a rock!" or "I didn't expect to find love there".

It's a super strange reality we've inadvertently created for ourselves through our language. It both seems more like a trap than a framework that frees us. If we were to consider framing this emotional phenomena differently - I wonder how language adjustments could make these concepts less objectifiable? 

If we were to consider Love, Peace, or Happiness as resources that we “generate” rather than “find” - would that instill a sense of agency instead of desperate searching?

I further wonder how this phenomena affects our perceptions of all human emotions and relations. They are all abstract, yet we configure them to be more manageable? Emotions are unwieldy as hell, and this is far from a complete thought. But certainly a thoughtful ledger to consider.

Oxford dictionary's word of the year for 2016 was "Post-truth". This year, "Fake News" became a culturally viral phrase. In class, my students fretted about the legitimacy of their sources. It seems the trust in scholarship has declined, but I don't like comparing history to present because the context can be misleading. Misleading juxtapositions, phrasings and presentations can lead to convoluted opinions that can have very real consequences in life. 

Through my work I've come to recognize that through dialogue, we can craft or at least manipulate our reality. Through attempting improved perception, we tend to act differently, perhaps better in many situations. Misleading material can impede this process and make it so easy for our audiences to maintain paranoia, extreme distrust and conspiracy rhetoric on their own corners of the internet. 

Prior to 2004 and the launch of Facebook, I would argue that we were mainly consumers of content. Only few of us created and even fewer created material to be consumed by the masses. Today, where there are endless platform options for creation, we have all become media makers. But very few makers create with their audience and after effects in mind. It feels irresponsible to know we can endlessly push content, but take little pride in its audience impact. It has gotten so bad, the culture surrounding content creation is distrustful. There is an entire website dedicated to locating and archiving shitty headlines from all over daily. It's scary to me how misleading we allow our content lure's to become all in hopes of a news rating that's profitable. It makes sense, but it breeds all these other fringe issues that largely affect the whole. 

This is clearly a super large can of worms, one I'll likely visit in a more professional manner. What I'm attempting to guide you towards (my dear few readers), is the idea that as we move forward in our own careers, whether directly involved in profitable or for-fun content creation, we must maintain a responsibility for the things we create. 

I don't mean giving up on being recklessly artistic (go for it, go crazy, get all the bio-degradable glitter out) I just mean, if you're out there as an English or communications major, any journalists or young writers or musicians or artists, whatever it may be: Be Responsible. Think of the impact you have on your audiences. Remind yourself, if you're vegan, vegetarian, a millennial, LGBTQ+ identified, there is something in your heart that burns for something better in this life. You all have an idea of what this ideal society is. Language, our content, all of it, matters to that outcome. Although you may feel small, responsibly creating things that better our lives is a commendable, honorable choice. Make articles that challenge misleading headline culture! Make art that forces people to address themselves! Make music that screams about these issues! Throw shade! And throw it well! 

Of all the positions I've worked, this is the first opportunity I've earned to put my knowledge to full practice. Being hired as a technical writer, one who makes a livable wage and is treated with respect, has been a trip. I don't know what else to call it. I've been in secretarial positions and client facing positions for so long, it's incredible to me that I don't have to interact with a customer base daily. In fact, I only talk to internal employees. 

I've gotten a wide array of responses to being a technical writer. Some ask why I'm there, if I'm busy at all, but most ask about what this job really consists of. It boggles my mind to realize how many employees interact with technical documentation every day, but don't make the connection of its importance to their every day tasks. To make it easier to explain, I simplify it into a joke, "If I do my job right, you won't have to answer questions from interns because the document will already answer all their questions" - it gets a few laughs, sometimes. 

It's a struggle with my students as well, many of them balk at me when I remind them that they'll never escape writing. They rebuke back, "well, I'm an engineer" or "I do math, I'll never have to do that" etc. I challenge them with my experience. I've worked with engineers, researchers, and as of late with a financial company. Writing never leaves the picture - no matter what industry. They're in part correct, it won't be a 5 paragraph essay or a cover letter. But they'll never be able to dodge reports, white papers, memos, emails, meeting notes etc.

The workplace is saturated with writing - and a wide variety of audiences to appeal to. In my last post I argued that rhetoric focused curriculum should be integrated into earlier schooling because it assists students in reading their environments and adaptation to situations much easier. It should also be taught through the lens of the professional workplace. But understanding the basics of technical writings, and applying knowledge of the audience as an advantage, communication can be improved in the workplace. 

Technical writing can benefit companies in several ways: 

• Reduce training time for interns and new employees 
• Make clear expectations for each role to reduce responsibility tensions
• Creates a paper trail of versions when software or procedures are updated 
• Ensures a simpler way to hold employees accountable - when documentation is not available, it can be easy to make mistakes
• Reduces workflow disruption - if someone is sick or out who completes a specific task daily, somebody can take over without delay because they have documentation to fall back on 
• Ensures a brighter future at the workplace by cultivating clearer communication 

If you've ever struggled through training, had trouble adjusting to a job because the information is overwhelming to understand verbally, or encounter too many methods of completing a task, your workplace may need a technical writer. If you'd like to talk more about this subject or have questions, please leave a comment or contact me. 

It's an ongoing joke in several of my core rhetoric classes that everything is a circle. Each time someone asks me a question about this or that, I struggle not answering with, "Well, it's an information system...a circle...again, which means it's both" Every time I bring up the circle we all laugh because it's truthful in part. 

Rhetoric has taught me to see nothing as dichotomous - it's impossible. It is never just one reason or another, its a compilation of problems. A timeline's worth of events that accumulate into tension. A good example are the dichotomous arguments we see regularly in American politics. You either take away the guns, or you amp them up. It's either the democrat's fault, or the republican's. It's either "handouts" or no support for the poor, etc. We know these, we've heard them for decades. 

Dichotomous logic leads audiences into very easy conclusions - it's them, not me. This encouraged Blame Game leads to a lack of critical thinking and a laziness that extends to the masses in which they do not see the value in small actions within their community and lives to affect the whole. By introducing rhetorical thinking, or even just the basic appeals and awareness of context at an earlier age than college, I really think we can move away from that kind of thinking. 

Kids already ask "why? Why? Why?" all the time! We are apt to shut it down most of the time, but don't always indulge their games. I believe - of course I am not the entire authority here being young, still in school and what not - that introducing rhetorical concepts at an early age would bring about an age of root reasoning and expansive perspective exploration. In teaching those concepts, it can be hard to logically move towards a one answer conclusion because one would have all the tools to think about the other factors in play. 

Dialogue can create reality - it can introduce perspective, widen one, and open the eyes to expansive possibilities in situations where it can be so easy to boil everything down. I hope in the future that my colleagues and I will work to create a curriculum that supports that kind of thinking and wonderlust into elementary schools and beyond. Even if it doesn't work in the way I suppose, students would still be learning advanced critical thinking that could lead them to more aware lives. 

I have to write a thesis this year since it's the final round of my degree and I'm not looking forward to it. I have never written anything close to 40 pages of content, it's not my training and that excessive length is far beyond my comfort zone. I want to scream WHY in the halls just to protest to ungodly quantity of fluff sentences I'll have to produce. I'll bitch about that process a bit later. 

The topic I'm writing on though really gets my brain going and it's constantly challenging the way I consider space in my everyday. I wrote a preliminary pre-paper (really I just vomited sources and information all over the page) but I'll attach it to this post if anyone's interested, my dear few readers that probably don't read these) to learn more about how space affects, encourages or inhibits behaviors or success in the classroom and other work spaces. 

I had a ridiculously tough time teaching this semester and for weeks I was tearing myself up over it, but I came to realize it wasn't me. It was the classrooms. Previously, I've taught in standard, fairly modular and adaptable classrooms. Separate desks for each student, a movable podium for me, a projector for all of us. Easy! Fast forward to this past semester, and I taught in one lecture hall big enough to be a theater and another class so small and immovable. It really fucked the year for lack of a better way to say that. 

Comp 1 only has about 18-22 students a class, if you put that few kids, including the ones who regularly skip, I was teaching in a void. My lectures, their sparse answers and even the sounds of them shifting in their seats were swallowed up by the vast space around us. Each student sat so far from the next they didn't start having casual conversation until the LAST WEEK OF CLASS. You're probably thinking at this point, well, the smaller class should be better right?? 

Wrong. This room was populated with tier seating, so the students weren't even level with each other. The tables were also 4 varying heights and they were bolted to the ground. When I attempted to facilitate group activities or discussions, the students were immediately filled with liquid hate at the moment of the request. I experienced so much resistance I cut the class a week short and skipped presentations (which they loved anyway) simply because I knew the rooms would be saturated to the brim with awkwardness so thick you could bottle and sell the shit. 

If you're still with me, you may be getting the inklings of what I'm getting at. The university, in its planning stages, didn't really take into account the types of learning the rooms would be housing. My university values community, discussion and collaboration. In those rooms, it was impossible to uphold these values. What I seek to argue in my thesis is that we must design classrooms as a tool for the class, rather than just a mundane housing unit. The overall goals of the course can absolutely be inhibited by the shit shape of a room. But of course, I'll be writing this in more academic language. Note to self, write about the nuances of academic writing. 

I recently just began a position in the corporate world. Hence the title of this ledger. I have been settled here for a month and already I've been warned of a restack - this means that the departments will be shuffled around to account for the new building. My team will likely lose the amazing office space we've been working in. Our space is open, without distinct cubicles (however, I do reside in a corner office, so it's a bit curbized but it's tolerably connected with the office) and with that we work very well together. By functioning in an open space, questions flow easily and conversation leads to problem solving. I've heard they're moving us to a strictly cubicle setting which would be generally detrimental to this team's success. Our office space is threatened and with the loss of it, the loss of our office "culture". 

There are of course ways to re-claim closeness with officemates and inventive ways to "make the best of it" but I emphasize that any place of work or learning should try to build their values into their designs. In doing this, the values can follow through without disruption and I argue, be retained more efficiently than a university or workplace that says, "work together!!" but only provides shitty, isolating spaces to do so. 

Earlier last week I mulled through a fair amount of Heidegger. I'm not fond of his work but the concepts fuel so much of my current research it's necessary to familiarize myself with the material. But in that lies a question, how important is reading the primary source when it's been synthesized better elsewhere?  Most colleagues that I work with will vehemently defend the need to read primary sources, but those same colleagues balk at reading sources from writers that conflict with their own views. 

Martin Heidegger was a Nazi. Worst of all, he was silent about the ungodly things happening aound him and a few bits of his writing even contained explicit anti-semetic language.  Further, he never apologized or rescinded his implied views. Since he joined the Nazi party in 1933 he was subsequently banned from teaching later in life. Although he lightly implied that he regretted his decisions, a man with all that authority and privilege never took a moment to discuss his mistakes. As someone who is toted so worldly and well-knowing, I would expect better. 

Times were different then. But it is 2018 and I don't necessarily agree with having to be forced to read primary material because it's synthesized so many other ways. There are many scholars that have done that work for us, taking something dense and turning it into something applicable. I believe they have more the right to be read than Heidegger. 

The values that the Digital Humanities and the general academic Rhetoric community don't seem to support requiring Heidegger source text. Just in case, my dear, few readers, you are reading this and would like to join the conversation, I've turned the comments on.

I feel so unjust when I read and use Heidegger as a source because I feel I have no excuse to use him when others have done better with his ideas. I also feel so slighted when I am forced to read works of problematic white men simply because other, better hearted people have crafted more sound works. This issue isn't necessarily a huge one for the Digital Humanities but discourse about problems such as these can open some great dialogue about what we can do better. 

This is a sort of response to Bruce Sterling's "Stop Saying Smart Cities" article released earlier this year. 

It was an insightful article - it gave voice to many of the fears we all harbor as humans navigating these always new integrated spaces. It also identified the bullshit that surrounds much of our incentive for integration. Data, our data, in all its complexities, is a highly desired resource. It can be used for so many innovative ventures - but it's usually used for advertising and other capitalistic plans. Ideally, if we can collect all the right data and a LOT of it, we can always give our users exactly what they want. This doesn't sound all that bad, as a user, I am glad when I receive ads and coupons for the things I really use. But Sterling highlights that it's not a future we should encourage. 

I agree, wholeheartedly. If we continue with the "smart" city vision we've got going right now, all we'll be left with is half-baked, chaotic, systematically oppressive algorithmic technologies in our cities and neighborhoods. Sketchy at best. He postulates that in bad parts of the city, the algorithms would shuffle all deviant behavior right into prison.

He's right in so many ways - but I choose to disagree with his bitterness. There's nothing bright in this future he's imagined and although it may be shallow to discount his fears on account of my sanity - I choose to imagine something more fantastic. Do not confuse me with an idealist. Or worse, an optimist. I would rather you see me as a slightly hopeful student - still clinging to the potential of decency as to not hang myself during finals. I hope, that through the digital humanities, STEAM (not STEM), other humanistic integrations and discussions, we can come to a safer, less shitty outcome. I hope that the smart cities that Bruce Sterling say don't and won't ever exist, are something I (and my classmates, my cohorts, and other bad ass tech friends) can bring into fruition.

Why can't I have a city that supports and interests me by using my data? Why can't we use SPIMES as a wholehearted way to reduce excess and solve our materials problems? Why can't we use surveillance as a way to stop the most horrible things from happening? What I wouldn't give to have cameras in the parking lot where I was assaulted. Or technology in the building I was harassed in. Or something that could alert the police when my cousin was stolen, never to be seen again. Why am I not entitled to a smart city with smart schools and smart technology? 

I studied architecture in high school for 3 years and readily applied the concepts during my time as an art student. Although I ended up getting my degree in professional writing/rhetoric instead, I still carry over many of those theories in my work. As of late, I've decided that I'll continue my exploration of spatiality, the effect of space, what it implicates for purpose and how it binds the body to behavior. 

To create a more palpable relation to the academic space I'm working in, I'll be relating the ideas to classroom spaces and maybe even labs for collaboration and experimentation. We discussed making and makerspaces along with the "internet of things" and Between Bits and Atoms, a piece written by Jentery Sayers and others. 

Bits and Atoms addressed a number of ideas regarding physical computing and desktop fabrication - they discuss what all of these developments in making mean to the digital humanities. They touch on responsibly using materials, convival computing, and they point out the many uses that fabrication can bring to a number of disciplines. They put quite a bit of focus on what those technologies have done to their makerspaces. 

Makerspaces are exactly what they sound like. A space in which one makes. Since it's an action based title - the room must facilitate the variety of actions implied. Creating a space in which everyone can make and be actionable is really challenging. Most classrooms and lab spaces confine the students to structures that sort of inhibit the desired actions. I.e - the classroom where I hosts workshops, none of the tables can be moved and the chairs are wickedly diverse. Which leads to students getting frustrated when they can't form groups easily or turn and discuss things with a classmate. 

I find that very rarely do Universities, businesses or institutions take the time to design the spaces to encourage their desired outcomes. Technology has made these rooms even more complicated in many ways. Often time, people see different types of technology as black boxed wonder to solve all their problems in the classroom - but without addressing the technology from a spatial and adoption/adaption lens, the integration may be horribly unsuccessful. 

I suggest - after this sort of disorganized rambling - to think before we make spaces. I have no authority to change these patterns of design - but I think it's important to say on the record anyway. If we were to create spaces with their end goals in mind, or at least what they expect to be accomplished in that room, the making would improve.  

I presented this week about why I believe kids should code. Ideally, I wish I had the money to back some sort of scholarship fund, or nationwide initiative. Maybe one day I can make it work.

Ted Underwood's The Stone and the Shell post, "Where to Start with Text Mining" emphasized that textual analysis isn't new. Our, "wrinkled spongy protein" brain is already much better at analyzing literature than most computers.  It's the large scale text crunching that's new, and it's hard for us to imagine all the possibilities because we're not used to thinking like that. But in combo with computers, we can accomplish a lot.

My Old Sweethearts: On Digitization and the Future of the Print Record by Andrew Stafford concluded with the argument that DH exists because of the value we place on both the digital memory as well as the physical text. It is the existence and the situational exploration of both that provides validity.

After those readings and ideas stewed in my mind, seasoned by a whole week spent on basic coding introductions, I started to think about all the opportunities kids had to dive into the practice. Learning late has been such a curve, but they do this stuff early right? I learned that this was not the case.

After a bit of research I realized that the only kids who get to really dive into coding and digital manipulation/creativity are those who parent's pockets run deep. Cubetto is an educational robot and coding interface for children 3 and up. It's lowest offer is about $250, the most expensive is far over $300. Other toys like Fisher Price's Code-a-Pillar is about $40 which is cheaper, but still likely not the first choice for many parents.

When I looked at coding camps toted as havens for creative kids, these prices were even more jaw dropping. An ID camp offered at USF is no less than $900 a week not including food, overnight fees or any bonuses kids may be interested. Only incredibly well off families can afford these expenses and schools certainly do not support coding initiatives in elementary school.

I believe that the whim like brilliance in children would be even more beneficial when supplemented with coding and digital manipulation lessons. As scholars working in DH now, we have to think backwards almost. We're used to looking at text analysis and manipulation in a different way because we've had to integrate those tools and processes pretty damn late. But if we were to teach kids that value of dualism, the awesome human brain and the power of the computer mind would be an incredible thought revolution.

I believe teaching coding early, like we do and encourage with any other language, would enable applicable innovation and creativity within each child. Hybridized thinking processes may be the answer to so many of the problems we struggle to see.

Here is my PechaKucha and script on the topic.