70% slow-cooked disorder
About 2 weeks ago it became horribly clear I was stalled on finishing my chapter on the Hong Kong case study. I had done 3/4 of it, but i had no ideas for the final section. Days of a blank screen.
So i eventually went to the library and borrowed some of those comforting books on how to write a thesis. many of them were quite dull, but one is great ..i had read it before but had forgotten some of the good, advice...title is "writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day" by joan bolker
it gave me the courage to leave that annoying case study and start something else...which is the rewrite of the text on P2P file-sharing i put up here a while ago... my colleague in sydney jon marshall grabbed it off the next layer and sent ut back to me with lots of questions and suggestions for developing some of the ideas further
so i moved out of my damp cold study downstairs to the kitchen table upstairs which is next to the gas heater and overlooks the garden.... and have been fiddling away with the text for about 9 days,...
the bad thing is that this piece of writing doesnt fit into my thesis so in that way it is a waste of time..but the good thing is that jon has already used part of it for a conference paper and we will have a joint paper that he will write...and then i am also maybe publishing some version of this text in a journal he will be editing or finding... and i thonk some of the research anyway will feed into my chapter on informational capitalism which i havent started thinking about yet and which needs to be written in the next 2 months
i think i will leave this chapter alone now for a week or so and get back to the thesis...but will post it half-cooked now..along with its half-cooked bibliography,,which u can find in the biblio area with the taxonomy term "peer-to-peer"
i will repost i when it is fully baked and decorated with an apple in its mouth so there is no need for anyone to actually read it unless you have an interest in P2P systems...i find it simply reassuring to post something here,,,the calm found in the act of uploading
:-)
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walled gardens of the subjective
thanks for this...it is really great to have the reminder...because it is not something i get from my supervisors...at my uni/unless u r in the one department that actively focuses on "ficto-critical" writing/research., the emphasis is on the 'objective', the empirical, the references to the canon, and the more personal writing is allowed but it is always suggested you have to find a strategy to keep it separate from the main text...it must be placed (maybe visually or structurally) in some kind of walled garden within the thesis..so the reader/examiner can treat it differently..perhaps more leniently
style matters
one thing that I forgot to say in the comments inserted in the document is that your writing is best when it is personal, for instance quite at the beginning, when you describe how you came to file sharing. this part is quite precise and strong. maybe somehow we all feel the pressure to write in this pseudo-objecive academic language which we pick up from books, but we are not used to it, so we are doing it badly. the real art would be then to focus on writing in ones own style - even, of course, if that is never fully defined and evolves on the go - but to be as personal and subjective as possible but at the same time very concise with that and use as few quotations as necessary, while at the same time provide as many references as necessary to provide evidence that the scholarly homework as been done. the first monday texts and tannenbaums can all stay where they belong, in the footnotes, they will have informed our thinking but we dont need to emulate them ... these words I say as much to myself as to you ...armin
Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a Pie
dear armin
thank you for such a comprehensive critique of my p2p mud pie. It is generous of you to engage so deeply with it, especially in its messy state.
i have only had a quick read thru so far, but this week i will print it out, and take somewhere pleasant to read, ie, not my super messy apartment...
you have given me HEAPS to think about ... and some suggestions i can work with fairly easily during my rewrite of the text, and others i feel i will "take on notice", but use them when i come to write my thesis chapter on informational capitalism, and also perhaps my closing chapter on open code and open culture.
i might reply to some specific points u've made during the week, as i continue to work through it ... you actually reminded me of another thing i am meant to be writing ths year, a book chapter for jon marshall's book on IT & Disorder, and i will attach to my research journal here the outline that i knocked up some time ago -- because i think some of the suggestions you make for paths to follow i could incorporate into the book chapter , which already is way too long .and i do wonder when i will write it this year becos really i have to write this thesis
i am struggling with **how** to write about all this stuff in general..i agree that it is important to back up the generalisations with empirical data,,.,and i can find that stuff fairly easily..the history of the net, net architectures is huge...and i am not sure i know that stuff in a way to be able to condense it sensibly...and i keep losing the poetry that i feel is important,.and that wd make the writing mine, and not that sort of cold, crisp First Monday style, or the super-academic language on the IDC list.....like for example i have been thinking to use the motif of the Scheherezade story somehow as a recurrent thread in my P2P stuff...the idea of cultural borrowing between middle-eastern and occidental cultures..on a centuries old non-electronic commons....i cant explain this yet, it is teasing me but without form...
anyway.....
thank you!
from a blackbird....
ps. btw, i didnt mean that the UK report on digi-britain was "excellent" per se, (i despise all that creative industries stuff) just that it was a good example of govts acknowledging p2p (and then making crap suggestions about how to stop it). but i do know i need to be careful about unconsious technolibertarian tendencies that mite be lurking in me. years ago when i was young and foolish i read K kellys out of control and got very excited about hive mind...
new version attached with comments
dear francesca
I just uploaded a new version with comments. somehow i was unsystematic, because sometimes the comments are marked yellow, but then, when they appear in proximity to what another previewer has written, I made them green. I must say I have read this text more carefully and my remarks are more critical than usual - but of course all in a very constructive sense - but be warned ...
love
armin
biblio pleasures
with calm sensuous joy i am clicking through the peer-to-peer biblio knowing that whenever I need something on that, it is already here ... and a lot of it in open journals such as firstmonday, in clicking distance so to speak ... thanx