Archive - Dec 20, 2007
Emerging Quirkiness
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/20/2007 - 15:02O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
- Robert Burns, To a Louse
In 1999, Professor David Jacobson of Brandeis University led a group of anthropology students into a text based virtual world where they were asked to interact with certain residents of the virtual world, and write up the impressions they had formed. Professor Jacobson then used this data to explore how we form impressions of people we interact with online.
I was one of the residents that the students interacted with and I found it very interesting to read Professor Jacobson’s paper about their impressions of me. It was particularly interesting to me since I was going through a divorce at the time and trying to reform my own self-impressions.
It is interesting to reflect on this in terms of my recent experiences with Spock, Spoke, Wink, Zoominfo, and other sites focused on online reputations.
The Christmas Tree
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/20/2007 - 09:23The large green tree
waits patiently
next to the growing pile of wrapped Christmas presents,
the dust covered boxes of last year’s ornaments,
and the couch, where the college student,
home for the holidays,
lays half delirious,
from this season’s stomach bug.
Poetry
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 12/20/2007 - 09:22A fragment of one of last night’s dreams remains with me this morning. I was in school. I had been distracted and was trying to find my place. We were studying poetry and I commented to the instructor about having not been writing much poetry recently. She asked me why I hadn’t been, and I said I didn’t know. I’ve just been distracted.
Well, maybe there is a message in that dream fragment. Maybe some of the reason I haven’t written much poetry recently is that I read or listen to some great poetry and get discouraged. Then, I read some blogs where people are putting up poetry that just doesn’t resonate with me, and I think, I don’t want to be putting up poetry that doesn’t resonate with anyone.
Yet, like with NaNoWriMo, there is something important about just doing it, so today, I’m going to start putting up some of my poetic scribblings.
