ohwhatablow’s posterous

Tool Use: Who Works Who?

   I don't want to use Word, Pages, Open Office or any WP. These are vestiges of the command and control origins of computing with the emphasis firmly on uniformity of work flow. The are two parts to a WP-ing document 1) Content 2) Form. These are intermingled to such an extent that it is almost impossible to escape the structure imposed by the WP. This is handy for enforcing memo standards across cubicle America, but lousy for collaborating on academic work.

   Example Problem: At yesterday's meeting we discussed various sections of the library report (which has now grown to 5 authors spread over two rural counties) such as; Who should be responsible for which particular sections (and the sundry housekeeping tasks). Of course, this inevitably brings up the more onerous question: Who is responsible for keeping the single document up to date and disseminating the changes as they are incorporated?

   What happens: Dissemination is done irregularly at odd intervals and usually under deadline duress, thus leaving the collaborators in the dark for long stretches. I think this is as much the fault of the WP as any person. There is simply no easy way to institute distributed versioning or to make changes visible to everyone all the time. Only the lead author knows exactly where the document is at any given point - thus turning the lead into a de facto corporate-style micro manager.

  A few starting points towards a solution: 1) I do not want to mix typesetting and type. 2) I do want to share text via email or a version control system. 3) ASCII is still the universal format being flexible, lightweight, and easily adaptable, so whatever tool we use must deal primarily in ASCII. 4) I want to move documents from informal beginnings towards more (or less)formal endings.

 A document which would allow TODOs and/or Agenda items to be interactively embedded directly into the document would be an added bonus. In addition the ability to tag sections of the document with tags we define would also be a great help.

 (Re)Opening the Black Box:

   I will borrow an idea from Jefferson and stake out my task as looking to the middle landscape of digital tools. Tools which are neither overly constraining nor so flexible that the learning curve is too time consuming to ascend. There exists no gentle way to drop the WP. It requires getting your hands dirty and actively re-working some tools. This means lifting the hood and playing with minor amounts of code and configuration settings. Is this hard? Yes, but the minor amount of pain caused by configuration and coding is nothing when compared to the daily indignities heaped upon me by WORD.

   I have, with help from some programming friends, arrived at a more flexible setup that allows me to divorce myself completely of the WP game (except for something to open the annoying .doc and .docx files). The set up consists of three tools which play nicely with each other, and whatever else I may CHOOSE to use, plus allow me share as much or as little as I wish.

   Org-Mode
  I have settled on org-mode as my new all purpose writing tool. Org-mode is an Emacs major mode, so it has the advantages of having full access to the power (while abstracting out most of the complexity) of Emacs. Org-Mode is a handy outliner, note taker, and drafting tool (creates tables, etc...) .It exports to html, LaTex, and so forth. It Integrates with R - for the Quantitators and/or data hipsters amongst us- and most of all org-mode provides a gentle ramp for starting documents informally and incrementally adding layers of formality as the document moves towards completion or abandonment.

 http://orgmode.org/
http://orgmode.org/worg/
http://orgmode.org/GoogleTech.html

   Git
  Distributed Version control. Designed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. Kernel development is essentially a large writing project involving a few hundred authors spread out worldwide.

 Just a few of the pressing questions that Git can elegantly answer:

 1) See changes over time - Where are we going? Where have we been?
2) Who has made changes? Why? Should I cut off contributor X?
3) How can I roll back the changes I don't like?
4) Can we branch this and spawn a new paper?

 http://git-scm.com/
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cduan/technical/git/

  Dropbox

   Dropbox installs as a local folder and, unlike most web based file sharing solutions, holds local copies of documents. When combined with GIT this makes an ideal distributed version control system for files under 2gb.

 http://www.getdropbox.com/

 ** Getting Git to work with Dropbox

 http://www.cimgf.com/2008/06/03/version-control-makes-you-a-better-programmer/

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Click here to download:

2009.pdf (171 KB)

The other day I had a conversation with a friend about the suddenness, intensity and lunacy of the birthers and the town hall health care protesters. Yeah...what can you really say about all that?
 
As it turns out, not much, so here is Richard Hofstadter's article published in Harper's on eve of the 1964 election.
 
 
Some Highlights:
 
The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and
independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not
merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American
power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to
be betrayal from on high.
 
 
Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original
conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the
consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual
machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that
it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to
develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but
circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him—and in any case he
resists enlightenment.
We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only
by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

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Our panel, Practicing Anthropology in the Shelves, was accepted by the AAA. Here are the gory details: http://theanthrogeek.com/2009/08/05/practicing-anthropology-in-the-shelves-designing-academic-libraries-via-ethnography/

 To riff on the conference theme (The Ends of Anthropology) I have returned to the raw data we simmered with Atlas.ti and stewed it into....well.....something other than Anthropology.

 Here is the rough procedure:

 1) From the raw fieldnotes and interview transcriptions we used Atlas.ti to create indexes and a handful of codes

 2) I ran the codes through Nodebox using the Flowerwolf and Linguistics library.

 3) Voila! The pataphorical end of anthropology.

 http://nodebox.net/code/index.php/Home

           

Click here to download:

The_Savage_Poetry_of_Our_AAA_P.zip (150 KB)

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Since the Purdue Sociology department broke the link to this rare work I will host it here. If you are at all interested in EM/CA this is a treasure trove. Enjoy.

The pdf is too large to display properly inline, however at the bottom of the frame is a link to the pdf, which you can download.

Click here to download:

2003.pdf (19299 KB)

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Currently I am collaborating with the http://theanthroguys.com/ on writing up our study of student library use at the Henry Madden library. So far, mechanically, this has taken the form of sending drafts and snippets back and forth via email. My suspicion is that this is the form most projects take.
 
We pass mostly complete works back and forth. Some annotation occurs to be sure, but for the most part we pass black boxes. However, I can't help but agree with these sentiments:
"I was prompted to do this after discussions with several digital archivists who complained that, prior to the computerized era, writers produced a series complete drafts on the way to publications, complete with erasures, annotations, and so on. These are archival gold, since they illuminate the creative process in a way that often reveals the hidden stories behind the books we care about. By contrast, many writers produce only a single (or a few) digital files that are modified right up to publication time, without any real systematic records of the interim states between the first bit of composition and the final draft. "
 
- http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/13/flashbake-free-versi.html
 
The question is: What sort of granularity do we require? How much of our private hemming and hawing should be shared? Somewhere in the white noise might be a hem or haw which gets elaborated upon, teased out and made important.
 
In a broader sense, why not appropriate programmer's tools for academic writing projects? They are past masters at collaboration, sharing, quality assurance and publishing work in progress. All ideas foreign to the business world that spawned the commonly used Word and it's work-a-likes.Tools like Word aren't built to allow exploration and improvisation. Word is, at best, nannyware,
 

 
See 5:00 on git's allowance for experimentation and serendipity, which strikes me as being of particular importance. Here is an article on one approach to integrating git into the writing process.
 
http://lifehacker.com/5232049/flashbake-automates-version-control-for-nerdy-writers
 
We deliberate among ourselves as we write the report, but our conversations and products are also mediated through, and by, our tools. They are in a material/semiotic sense actors along with us and it wouldn't hurt to consider closely at how they afford or constrain what is possible.

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There is no software package for OS X that approaches the power and might of Atlas.ti or NVIVO. An unfortunate state of affairs. However, with a little elbow grease and divergent thinking I have managed to bridge the gap enough to save myself from having to run Windows in a virtual machine and pay for an overpriced license. Here is how I managed a workaround for the lack of QDA software on OS X:
 
Problem #1: We have multiple researchers who need access to files from multiple locations over multiple devices.
 
Commercial Solution: Database with commercial support license??
Our Solution: Jungledisk (thank you to theanthrogeek for this suggestion). Though it hasn't been perfect, Jungledisk offers enough security, reliability, and ease of access to be a viable solution. Currently we have around 900 files totaling 10 gigabytes with 5 researchers working on them in tandem.
 
Problem #2: We have audio and video files to transcribe and annotate.
 
Commercial Solution: Like a giant can opener Atlas.ti will open anything and everything in its path and allow annotating, coding and memo-ing to your hearts content.
Our Solution: Transana. For $50 Transana elegantly handles audio and video QDA. An added bonus is the Jeffersonian notation engine. http://www.transana.org/
 
Problem 3#: How do I search across multiple files that are in various formats (including the annoying .docx)?
 
Commercial Solution: Atlas.ti, like an ocean trawler captures everything in its path.
My Solution: Texwrangler and Alien Converter. I use Alien Converter to convert the collected files (field notes, interview transcriptions, etc...) to a text processing friendly format, then I slurp them all up with Texwrangler. Textwrangler allows me to open, and search through, multiple files within one window. All matching hits are collected in a second window, which I can save, annotate, code or what-have-you.
 
I would say I have managed to cover about 40% of what NVIVO or Atlas.ti can offer.....but I've covered the 40% I need.
 
For more on the analytical role of QDA software, see: http://www.slideshare.net/theanthrogeek/with-great-power-mullooly

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We asked the students to: Show us where you do schoolwork...

                   

Click here to download:

Student_Workspaces.zip (7264 KB)

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Some quotes taken out of context and strung together to form a quasi-historical narrative:

1) I always worked to defend my fatherland from foreigners. Let all my rifles and machine guns only serve the defense of the fatherland
2) A designer does much the same thing with a prototype. I felt like a mother - always proud.
3) The negative side is that sometimes it is beyond control.
4) Terrorists also want to use simple and reliable arms
5) Then it was like a genie out of the bottle and it began to walk all on its own and in directions I did not want.
6) I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists.
7) I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help people with their work - for example a lawnmower
8) But I sleep soundly. The fact that people die because of an AK-47 is not because of the designer, but because of politics.
9) My work is my life, and my life is my work. I invented this assault rifle to defend my country. Today, I am proud that it has become for many synonymous with liberty.
10) Man keeps inventing things all the time.

- Kalashnikov

So much for Design with a Purpose. Teleology be damned. A designer has about the same amount of control over misuse of their design as Kalashnikov has over my appropriation of quotes attributed to him by the internets. Kalashnikov designed the AK while in a military hospital recovering from wounds received during the opening days of Barbarossa. How could he have envisioned the future beyond driving the Germans from Russia and making sure they don't return?

Regardless of intentions good, bad or indifferent, the genius, and madness, of the AK lies in its potent combination of these four elements:

1) Mobility (Light weight, low maintenance)
2) Power (High rate of fire)
3) Reliability (Rarely breaks, can be cleaned with gasoline and lubricated with oil)
4) Ease of Use (Even children can operate an AK)

Only one technology hits these high points: Mobile Phones hooked to the computing grid via SMS. Mobiles are a potent cocktail with the same ratio of basic ingredients as the AK:

1) Mobility (Light weight, low maintenance)
2) Power (Interact with networked computers via SMS command interface)
3) Reliability (Phones never die they just become obsolete)
4) Ease of Use (Even children can send an SMS)

Happy Birthday, Kalashnikov. Who knew?

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Some of the most illuminating data we collected vis-a-vis the bundle of bureaucratic and busywork hassles I am glossing as "chickenshit" came from students in two elite programs.
 
One elite program exists for entering freshman and is designed to replicate a small liberal arts college experience for a few hundred students within the larger (25K + students) public college. These students receive four year scholarships, priority registration, free housing, some special classes with the other elite students, and a host of additional support. The second elite program is for undergrads hoping to pursue doctoral work and offers much of the same support but is focused grad school admission.
 
In interviews conducted with these students, they differentiate themselves from the great mass of students primarily through their avoidance of the daily indignities heaped upon undergrads. Time and again in their interviews perks were mentioned as the primary benefit of the special programs - rather than "academic rigor" as the administration claims. And the perks primarily allow them to avoid chickenshit.
 
Perks, such as:
Priority Registration.
Free Parking ("People would be really mad if they found out") .
First shot at on campus jobs.
Access to department "fixers" who help them navigate the paperwork jungle and direct them to helpful insiders. ("Most of it is stuff you don't realize is beneficial until ...you talk to your friends who had to go to four different offices...and waste an afternoon")
 
In one case an elite student (mis-)used a librarian appointed to her cohort in order to receive citations and resources on demand via email, and thus avoid entering the physical library or searching through the online catalog. Though this was an extreme case the others reported receiving some form of assistance navigating the library, thus negating the necessity of learning to conduct independent library research.
 
The ultimate perk cited by the elite students, though, is the benefit of the doubt extended to them by both faculty and administration. Time and again when in between grades, upon missing due dates, or faced with extracurricular schedule conflicts, the elite students were assumed to be...elite students, doing elite student-y things in an elite manner and given a pass.
 
Somewhere between free parking and extended homework deadlines the boundary between the hassle of administrative chores and consequential (in the future in not the present) academic work has been transgressed in these programs.
 
The critical question for the library becomes: Are the elite students early adopters signaling emergent student expectations? If so, how does the library clearly differentiate itself as a center of consequential work as opposed to yet another locus of chickenshit on campus?

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