Sing a little

Recently I have been thinking about "high stakes" situations in which to theorize about compromise, or agency. It seemed to me that the stakes had to be high on some kind of universal level in order to be worth thinking about or to be impactful in any kind of lasting way. When I read Hull and Katz's "Crafting an Agentive Self: Case Studies of Digital Storytelling" last semester, I loved the idea that digital story telling could perhaps help a marginalized young person (which to an extent is all young people, whose needs and skills are never valued, only 'crafted') to craft a sense of agency for themselves. But I worried that it would be only that: a sense of agency. One of my concerns perhaps was that the stakes of "succeeding" at DUSTY were too low.

Congestion

I just read this interesting post from BikePortland.org (via my favorite brother) about how turning off traffic lights in one small town in England actually decreased travel time and made everyone stop acting like bunch of toddlers with driver licenses.

I've actually seen something like this before and never stopped to think about it. When the power goes out on a light, people approach the light slowly, cautiously. They take turns, being very careful to make sure the next person in line is the next person to go. It's amazing. Drivers do this without getting together and talking about it or voting on it or even being told to. They just do it.

Schizo

I had a strange sort of epiphany today. I decided to go public with my blog by posting it on my facebook. I also decided to finally change my profile picture to something that more closely reflects my identity (whatever that means, see my previous post "Identity"), as opposed to that picture of the Columbia Basin gorge. And I engaged in a pretty interesting blog-off with Kaseido/John.

When I first set up this blog, I didn't know what it would be about. Still don't, really. But I knew I didn't want to be constructed as female. I loved the idea of being able to be anyone or anything on the internet. But that's not what happened. My blog wandered, directionless, and my online identity floundered, essentially meaningless and context-less. I couldn't escape being me.

A Voice in the Wind

I just saw yet another article on Engadget about how Android sales are overtaking the iPhone (and other smartphone OS). I rarely actually read these any more because I am so tired of the media (yes, I'm referring to Engadget and its tech-blog cronies as media) constructing this Apple vs Android war.

Identity

Last week I started a D&D game with some fellow grad students. Three of them I know and have socialized with before. Two, including the DM, I had never met in person. I was approached by the DM about what type of character I'd like to play. I'm fairly new to D&D, only ever having played a few times with the older version in 2003/4, so I had a vague idea of who I wanted to be. Negotiating that sort of vague and nebulous identity with the DM via facebook prior to the game, while being simultaneously aware that I would be meeting him in person and having to relate with him on that level was really interesting to think about rhetorically, after I stopped panicking about it.

Compromise

Compromise is a part of every relationship. Usually I think when people imagine compromise, they imagine some magical solution that everyone is 100% happy with. But that's not what compromise is. It's more likely that at least one of the parties will be distinctly unhappy with a portion of the compromise.

People don't like to hear that. In politics, voters don't appear to understand compromise. They see that their politician has betrayed them and their interests. And unfortunately, this is where compromise would be really helpful. Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity (link here, embedding messed up my formatting) is based on the idea that 70-85% of the population could live with the compromises that politicians could probably come up with, but they are too busy having "shit to do" that they are not as vocal as the other 15-30%, thus, compromise never happens. I really hope that's the truth.