An Outsider Looking In

It's day two of MiT6 (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit6/index.html), and the conference is awesome, but a bit overwhelming. Not in the "wow, these people are so smart that I can't reach their level" way but in the "damn, I thought I had a good grip on these ideas, and these people know so much more about it than I do" way. Makes me nervous for my presentation tomorrow, but I know what I'm talking about, I've got some good ideas, and I honestly shouldn't be freaking out about this. This feeling sucks cause it's always in the pit of my stomach, but it means I'm taking this as a serious opportunity. Maybe it's a blessing and a curse that I'm at the last time slot of the conference. Oh well. Nothing to do really but present it.

What's been really exciting about the conference is being exposed to new ideas, which are forcing me to think about how my own research will reflect and deal with such issues. I mean, think about the replication of narrative: there's adaptation, appropriation, versioning, and translation all to consider. Then set those various methods next to something like transmedia storytelling, and what to you get? A jumbled mess on how digital media uses narratives within storytelling. It complicates all this thinking on how we treat narrative and what we do with it when we move between different modes of storytelling.

In another strain of thought, the term and idea of "Web 2.0" is really problematic. Web 2.0 implies that what we have now is a new version of the web that we didn't have before. That sounds so static, and the changes happening to technology on the web is much more fluid. We can do more with the net now than we could before. This doesn't call for a need for an idea about 2.0. The technology is the tool. It's the people who are changing how they use it.

There's some random thoughts for the moment.

A Brief Update

Time for a new post. And what better time to write it than in the midst of a boring feminism lecture in my lit theory class. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about feminism, but this class just makes me shut down for three hours. This isn't bad, but I could be doing something more constructive. Like reading the Faerie Queene. Or sleeping.

Anyway, so it's been a while. A long while. A lot has happened. And nothing's happened. Went to Vegas. Lost some cash. Came back. Been here busting my ass more with two classes this semester than I was with three last semester. But it's good.

Big things:

Going to Louisville for a week on Friday. Should be good times with Erin and Joey for a week. Wish Chase could join us.

Presenting a paper at MIT in April. Pretty stoked about this. But also aware that I need to spend time working on the paper.

Hokies are Orange Bowl Champs! This obviously happened a while ago, but I need something good since the basketball team seems to lack any desire to win and make the NCAA tourney.

I know there are other things, but I'll make some more detailed posts later.