karen louise smith

This semester, I have been involved in the design research series at KMDI. Here is the abstract for the series of talks:

"Epistemologically, what do designers ‘know’? Are there ‘designerly ways of knowing’ distinct from the recognised scientific and other scholarly ways of knowing? Speakers from different disciplines will take these questions as their point of departure to explore what, for them, constitutes a legitimate knowledge claim. And, since research in knowledge media design is typically trans-disciplinary, we will also explore ways of fostering communication across disciplinary boundaries and bridging traditional epistemological divides."

The series has been successful so far and I’m looking forward to the speakers in future weeks, including Nigel Cross.

I’m at home right now on the couch and Michelle Obama is on CNN and Larry King live. Seeing Michelle on TV reminds me to Google her husband on YouTube to find the Yes We Can music video.

The video is old news by now, but I felt the need to check it out anyways. When I arrived on YouTube, the counter displayed 3,409,935 views. After I played the video, I scrolled down and looked at the comments. As one might expect any political video with over 3 million hits, some of the comments contribute little to a deliberative public sphere. My overall impression of the video however, is that it packs a punch. The simple rhetorical refrain of 'Yes We Can' is inspiring to me. As a Canadian, I cannot vote in the US election but I will continue to watch with interest.

I mean what I say. It is now 12:31 am and Michelle has departed from Larry King. They've moved on to Mike Huckabee and apparently the Democrat/Republican coverage is in balance this evening.

The provisional schedule for Politics: Web 2.0 conference being held in April 2008 at Royal Holloway University in the UK just got posted. I will be attending and presenting a paper related to photoblogging and social change.

A recent article in The Star by Carol Goar, announced that the Canadian Health Network (CHN) is being axed. Part of my master's thesis research was to study screen capture video files (collected with consent) from end-users who looked for health information using the CHN. The fact that the CHN is a collaboration of organizations (i.e., government departments, non-profit health organizations, universities, etc.) and is a non-corporate source of health information makes it an interesting resource to study. I will be watching for further announcements and to see what the political rationale is for the funding cut.

Last week I handed in a paper on actor-network theory (ANT) and the possibilities of critical and politically engaged research involving the internet. For now, it is my ANT opus.

In completing my research one of the most interesting pieces I came across was by Noortje Marres. She deployed software called an Issue Crawler to use hyperlinks as a was to trace and describe a political issue network concerned with the ownership of the Development Gateway website.

If you have access through a university/institutional library you can see:

Marres, N. (2004). Tracing the trajectories of issues, and their democratic deficits, on the Web: The case of the Development Gateway and its doubles. Information Technology & People, 17(2), 124-149.

If you prefer information in gateless cyberspace, please see http://movies.issuecrawler.net/

I was interested to read on the cbc today that Douglas Coupland is working on scripts for a new TV sitcom based on his book JPod.

I will be watching the CBC with interest come January 2008 to see what unfolds as characters like Ethan, Kaitlin and Cowboy design video games in their Vancouver studio. I am interested to see if the characters become figures who Canadians come to know, like Fatima from Little Mosque on the Prairie, or Joey from Degrassi High. Canadian television characters sometimes get linked directly to policy issues. The Health Canada sponsored social marketing documentaries with Degrassi actors serve as an example of the connections which are possible.

I will be waiting in suspense to see if the JPod crew get linked to the politics of connectivity in our country. Are they our user role models for 'effective' use? Are we connected Canadians yet?