Biopower and the Contemporary

June 20, 2007

France Warns Officials on BlackBerry Use

By JOHN LEICESTER
Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) — BlackBerry handhelds have been called addictive, invasive, wonderful - and now, a threat to French state secrets.

That, at least, is the fear of French government defense experts, who have advised against their use by officials in France’s corridors of power, reportedly to avoid snooping by U.S. intelligence agencies.

“It’s not a question of trust,” French lawmaker Pierre Lasbordes told The Associated Press. “We are friends with the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons, but it’s economic war.”

May 4, 2007

Anthropological Collaboration & Writing Form

by Karpiak

Just came across a new feature of the journal Ethnos, called “Anthropologists Are Talking” which has the following mission statement:

The aim of the series is to provide an alternative to the standard, single-authorarticle that academic journals generally publish in order to give spaceto a more dialogic kind of reflection. When they do not write, anthropologistsarguably spend much of their professional time (though perhaps not as muchas they might like) engaged in informal academic conversations, corridor talk,and debates with colleagues at seminars and conferences. ‘AnthropologistsAre Talking’ seeks to emulate these kinds of informal conversations in theconviction that they often turn out to be formative for the ideas that laterbecome the basis of our publications. The series is intended to explore theseinformal kinds of inspiration and knowledge production that otherwise rarelymake it into academic journals. The series does so by bringing together agroup of anthropologists and inviting them to talk candidly and spontaneouslyabout a contemporary issue of common concern to them.

Sounds quite similar to what we’ve been trying to do in our best moments in the Labinar. This installment of AAT is a discussion about “anthropology after globalization” between Eric Hirsch, Bruce Kapferer, Emily Martin, and Anna Tsing

Filed under Connectivity and collaboration and concept work and remediation at 10:57 am
3 comments »

February 18, 2007

Anthropologist Does Web 2.0 on YouTube

by marymurrell

Anthropologist Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography lab have made an interesting video on Web 2.0. I count it among the “avant gardist” commentary out there about information technology: everything is new. But watch it. It’s worth the four minutes and 31 seconds, and has gotten a good bit of attention.

Filed under Connectivity and new media and technology at 9:52 am
3 comments »

February 5, 2007

Everyone Blog!

by marymurrell

To get our blog going, it was decided at today’s Labinar general meeting that everyone should post a blog about either “the” problem of their ongoing research or “a” problem that is concerning them at the moment, explaining why it is important. Everyone should try to do this within the next week. The entry needn’t be long or especially detailed. A couple of succinct paragraphs will suffice.

The purposes of the Lab Notes blog are:

Wordpress (the blogging software we’re using) provides most html codes that you’ll need: for boldface, italic, blockquotes, linking to other websites and photo uploads.

A few tips about blogging (picked up in my I-School class last term):

1. use an effective headline (that captures the point of the post)
2. include links in your post as often as possible. Linking improves traffic to the site and allows others to find your post. Linking is considered the art of blogging, captured in the blogospheric motto: “Link as you think.” Discoveries are a great aspect of blogging: sharing things that people might not otherwise know about or find themselves.
3. write clearly and grammatically — although a blog is relatively informal, the writing should not be sloppy.

Filed under Connectivity and Pedagogy and events/Writing Group at 9:54 pm
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Notes from General Labinar Meeting Feb 4

by marymurrell

Today Anthony Stavrianakis, Mattias Viktorin, Limor Darash, Amelia Moore, Alfred Montoya, Jerome Whitington, Emily Chua, Paul Rabinow, China Scherz, and I met today to discuss our activities this Spring. Kevin Karpiak, Adrian MacIntyre, and Erin Mahaffey couldn’t make the meeting due to schedule conflicts.

Most importantly we discussed the new blog and the less-new wiki. Anthony has been named the Lab Notes blog administrator, so all concerns among our group should be forwarded to him: stavrianakis@berkeley.edu

Also discussed:

– We decided against having a regularly scheduled face-to-face meeting. On the other hand, we hope to have at least one “event” a month throughout the term.

– Paul reported that he and Gaymon are working on a draft statement on
“contemporary equipment.” Amelia and Mattias will be arranging a event
around it.

– Right now the Lab Notes blog has a glitch that requires anyone commenting to log in first. We are attempting to fix this now so that anyone can comment. Only those logged in will be able to post, but anyone will be able to comment.

– I appointed myself the “wiki gardener” and will keep the “current event” section
of that updated, so that everyone can look there for meeting times, dates,
upcoming events. Just click on: this link. If you have questions about using the wiki, you can direct them to me, but of course everyone should be actively editing and adding to the wiki as he or she likes. People who haven’t put something about themselves on their individual wiki pages, should try to do so, at least their contact info.

Filed under Connectivity and Pedagogy and events/Writing Group at 9:24 pm
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