I know where my towel is

As a miserable high school student in the late 1980s, I memorized the HHGG series. I built an electronic thumb, with some help from my dad and a bunch of spare computer parts. I desperately hoped I could hitch a ride on an alien spacecraft and see the galaxy — though I suspect a lot of that was because high school was so appalling. Douglas Adams’ books helped make it bearable. At 10, my son loves the series. This photo of me with my towel is a little tiny tribute to an author who fired the imaginations of millions of devoted, if weird, fans.

Many, many other commentaries precede mine; apart from the 400+ comments on that post itself, a host of other bloggers have responded. To name but a few, danah boyd’s response promotes diversity — learning to accept, value, and seek out people who think and act differently from you — over assimilation; Meredith Farkas’ post makes the point that if one has to be a jerk to get ahead, maybe the system’s borked; while Tom Coates argues very eloquently that we, as a society, should not encourage lying, arrogance, or aggression. There are many more, some of which agree with Mr. Shirky’s views and some of which don’t, gently or otherwise.

Mr. Shirky’s post makes me mad. It’s patronizing. I don’t need to act more like him to get what I want. I’ve worked for people, both men and women, who were perfectly able and willing to see my talents because they were good at seeing talent. I’ve also worked for people who weren’t, and I found that they generally didn’t appreciate the talents of my male colleagues, either, even the loud ones. I’m certainly not saying that discrimination doesn’t happen or that there are no cases where only the squeaky wheel gets greased, because I’ve been in those situations too. But I wouldn’t be comfortable saying I am good at something I’m not good at in order to get a job that I wouldn’t know how to do. I’d hate it. I don’t want to be there. I have no problem saying “… not good at yet” or “I haven’t done that, but I’ve looked into it and I can learn how,” because those things are true. On the other hand, I know women who would lie about their abilities in a heartbeat to get a job they wanted, and who would thrive in jobs where they had to learn it all on the fly; likewise, I know men who wouldn’t, and men who would. Looking at the world and saying “You’re not like me and you’re a woman, and he is like me and he’s a man, therefore women have a problem and should act more like men” is a narrow, binary view, and frankly I expected better. Actions are based on more than just gender, and there are many ways to be happy and successful.

There are some particular statements in the post that especially irritate and offend. For instance, Mr. Shirky says, in reference to a draft letter of recommendation written by a male student in which the student overstated his own abilities: “And I’ve grown increasingly worried that most of the women in the department, past or present, simply couldn’t write a letter like that.”

I’m sorry. Couldn’t? As in, we don’t have access to the same language, or our writing skills aren’t up to the task? Nope, I don’t buy it. “Couldn’t” and “wouldn’t” are not the same thing. Mr. Shirky describes an inability, a gender-based inability, for a woman to extravagantly toot her own horn. Granted, women have historically been taught not to do that, both explicitly and subtly, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do it. If you want to take issue with the cultural setting that teaches us not to boast, please do. You’d be in good company, and it’s a very strong influencer. But women certainly can speak well of themselves, and many do, and not everyone has to be an asshole to make herself sound good. In fact, the woman colleague that Mr. Shirky describes who sent her work to a reporter doesn’t appear to have done anything like what I’d call the behavior of a “self-aggrandizing jerk.” She just pointed to her work and said, “Hey, I’m good at what I do and this is interesting stuff.” There’s nothing inherently male about that.

Mr. Shirky also says that “…until women have role models who are willing to risk incarceration to get ahead, they’ll miss out on channelling smaller amounts of self-promoting con artistry to get what they want, and if they can’t do that, they’ll get less of what they want than they want.” That’s a little like saying I get less food at dinner because I eat with a fork instead of shoving food into my mouth with both hands. It may be true, but I don’t really want to eat that way, or sit with people who do. The fork-users are more pleasant company and it’s easier to carry on a conversation with them. I just don’t see myself choosing my role models from liars, jerks, and prison inmates. It’s possible to be outspoken and confident and still not be abrasive. Although, as danah boyd points out, it’s more difficult for women to do that than for men because we are surrounded by a culture that teaches all of us — women and men — that an outspoken woman is automatically abrasive.

If I look beyond the patronizing tone of the post, I can see that there is a premise there that I can identify with. It is difficult for me to speak out, especially to disagree with someone like Clay Shirky. As I am drafting this post, reasons not to publish it keep occurring to me: I didn’t see the original post soon enough, and now everyone has already weighed in. Who cares what I have to say — this is all just my own opinion, not research, and I’m not a famous author or even a well-known blogger. And all the points that I might make have already been made, somewhere. I don’t know where these thoughts come from; I don’t lack self-confidence in general. Maybe they are gender-related, though I suspect I know more than a few men who think those same things, or who did when they first started to blog. Maybe it goes away with practice.

But really, everyone hasn’t weighed in, if I feel I have something to say and I haven’t yet said it. As for “who cares what I have to say,” the answer to that arises almost as soon as I voice the question: I do. This is my blog, for me. If you are still reading this post, thanks for the investment of your time, but I didn’t write it for you. And even if someone else has already made the points I want to make, there’s still room on the vast, giant thing that is the Internet to store a more few bytes of data. Is it hard to post this? Yes, sure it’s hard. Is it risky? Sure. I’m openly and publicly disagreeing with a well-known writer and speaker. And OH MY GOD, I just realized don’t have ANY BALLS! What can I be thinking?

But having these thoughts doesn’t put me at a disadvantage, as long as I still hit that publish button and get my voice out there. And I don’t have to behave like a jerk to say what I want to say. I’m not going to act more like the men Mr. Shirky describes. I’m not going to choose them for my role models; nor am I going to seek out female role models who emulate them. Instead, I choose to focus my efforts on developing my own voice, in my own way. It’s entirely possible to be both courteous and self-promoting, to both be truthful and toot your own horn. I’m going to support practices that move us closer to a model of the workplace where it’s expected that people aren’t jerks and don’t lie about what they can do. Where people in power actually look at people’s work and don’t just listen to the loudest voice.

Actually, many of my role models did go to jail, but not for being con artists. Thousands of women have been arrested, and in some parts of the world are still arrested, for trying to change the way society views and treats us. Fortunately, in this day and age, we can blog instead.

So I rely on rituals to get me through the sleepy part of the morning, until I’m really awake and the momentum of the day takes over. One of these is Morning Twitter Lurking. Right after the alarm goes off — and I actually set it 15 minutes early to accommodate this ritual — I grab my iPhone, turn down the brightness (because I can no longer focus on the screen in the dark if I don’t), open Tweetie, and read.

from this morning's Lurk

However, I don’t really care what they called it so long as it works, so of course I tried the hello world of search engine tests: the ego search. Yup. Typed “rachel smith nmc” into the little box and hit enter. (I used to do just “rachel smith” but ever since that other one nearly made it to Miss Universe, I’ve had to be more specific. Adding “nmc” usually keeps her out of the results.) Let’s see what you’ve got!

Um. What? At first glance, none of the results are relevant except the first and last ones. I recognize the NMC logo, and I recognize the screenshot of our podcast page. The rest of the photos are not me, not anyone I know, and not relevant.

But the text is.

Who are those people? There’s my Academic Commons profile in the #2 slot, but that’s not a picture of me. I’m willing to give Cuil some credit and say that it is a photo from a different profile on the AC site. Not ideal, but understandable. Let’s look at the next entry. An older blog post from CogDog, looks like, talking about the Director’s Meeting in 2005 that focused on Campus Impact. I was there, so that’s likely to be relevant. But the photo is… oh no! It’s her! WTF?

At this point, I glance over the rest of the page and realize that EVERY SINGLE text entry is relevant, but NONE of the photos of people are. Some of them aren’t even related to the text they are next to, like the CogDog/Almost-Ms-Universe combo. And what’s up with the one on the horse? Who knows.

I am now wondering how they pick their images. Maybe the FAQ will shed some light. Let’s check it out.

Not so much.

If you can’t match the photos with the text, don’t put ‘em in. It’s just misleading. I notice the photos first and assume the results aren’t relevant. For comparison, the first 21 images in a Google Images search on the same phrase are either me or related to me. That’s the entire first page. My pageant counterpart doesn’t even turn up until page, um, I don’t know. I got bored and stopped looking for her after page 9.

My $0.02: Not ready for prime time. Sorry Cuil.

april fool by Rachel Smith
posted 1 Apr ’08, 8.31am PDT PST on flickr

16 years ago today…

I was in Libreville, Gabon, wrapping up four months as an intern with the Peace Corps. My job was to set up the computer network (Appletalk) in the main office, help the staff convert from a paper-based forms process to a computer-based one–this involved creating a lot of custom forms in FoxBase–and teach them how to use everything from word processing software to Hypercard.

For April fool’s day, I created a custom Hypercard stack and set it up on every single computer the night before so that when the computers were turned on in the morning, the only thing that would launch would be my stack, with the first card (top image) showing. Of course, if you looked hard enough, it was obvious that Hypercard was running, but most people just read the “error” text. When they clicked OK, they got the next card in the stack (bottom image), and then if they followed along through, there were some jokes and animations. I printed out screen shots of the stack and pasted them into my sketchbook, which is how I am able to share them with the world now.

I suppose it’s not surprising that most people didn’t think it was funny. So, if anyone from PC Libreville sees this, happy April Fool’s Day! I hope you can laugh at it now :-)

A few of the highlights for me were Kristina Woolsey’s keynote on Pagespace and Screentime, in which she talked about how we can move back and forth between analog and dynamic modes of expression, using technology to make mediamaking easier; the chili cookoff — as an icebreaker, it rocked, and man was that some good chili; seeing all the different styles of visual notetaking as charts bloomed into color by the hour on every wall; Carl Moore’s $39 challenge; and the Bandelier National Monument visit, injury notwithstanding. But the absolute best take-away was, for me, the new friends I made and the renewed connections with old friends. What a wonderful community!

On Saturday I spoke about digital natives and visual practice. I’m not, by Marc Prensky’s definition, strictly a digital native (yes I am too old), but if you think of digital natives as inhabiting a certain technological landscape or country, I can safely say that I’ve lived there since I was twelve and that counts. I do have an accent, most noticeably when I send text messages (I will keep using whole words), but I can speak the language. So I showed people around the place and handed out tourist visas. Alan, I swiped your 50 tools list and turned the visual practitioners loose on it. Thanks for letting me piggyback on months of your hard work :-)

Because of my sprained ankle I got to give my presentation seated on a kind of tall, wrought-iron throne with one leg propped up, and I think it really enhanced the experience for me. I think that once I am famous and have my own road crew I will demand a throne for each of my speaking engagements. There’s a lot to be said for the free-range, wandering-presenter model of speaking, which is good because it will be a cold day in hell before I have my own road crew, but in the meantime I will remember the glory of this particular setup and forget the sprained-ankle thing.

You can find pictures of the conference on Flickr, and I will post my little 90-second story about Bandelier as soon as I work out how to compress it to something webworthy.