I spent much of my week distracted and distraught by the demonstrations and confrontations in London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, to name some of the locations of unrest this August. Perhaps I was particularly tuned in to that part of the world because in June I was working in London and Bristol, and in […]
Engaged vs. Entrepreneurial Universities
One keynote address at the recent Erasing Boundaries symposium was by Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., from the University of Buffalo Center for Urban Studies; it was entitled “The Engaged versus the Entrepreneurial University: How Neighborhoods Matter.” (See earlier posts for descriptions of the symposium.) Taylor posited these types of universities as two distinct, indeed opposing, […]
Case Studies of Engagement
At the recent Erasing Boundaries symposium, there were so many sessions with fascinating case studies of people’s engagements. (See “Spaces of Connection” post below for more information on this symposium.) Jocelyn Zanzot (Auburn) spoke about the Rural Landscape Studio in Macon County, Alabama, in which she and her students worked with the Shiloh Missionary Baptist […]
Local, Global and Digital Engagements
As noted in the previous post, I was able to attend the Erasing Boundaries Project symposium in April 2011 in New York City. The project is a collaboration among landscape architecture, architecture, and planning faculties, students and community partners. The two days in New York were packed with stimulating presentations and lectures. Kudos to the […]
Of Rockets and Humanities
Speaking a year ago at the 50 Years of Public Computing at UI symposium (April 15, 2010), Professor Marc Snir noted that technologists at times have been uninterested in the outcomes of their inventions: “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department.” Of Community Informatics (CI), Snir noted: […]
Regional Relationships
The collaborative artist team, Regional Relationships (RR), has just launched its first edition! Matthew Friday, the first artist commissioned by RR, has been working in southern Ohio with flooded mines. He writes of “interlocking networks of abandoned mines” that number about 12,000. A bacteria has colonized the flooded underground areas and, as part of their […]
Notes on “Archiving Memory in the Age of Digital Technologies”
I am still playing conference catch-up. Between September 23 and October 3, 2010, I went to two conferences, the Imagining America conference in Seattle, and the Society for the History of Technology conference in Tacoma. For now, I just want to share my notes on the keynote talk on September 24, 2010 by Diana Taylor […]
Reboot, Rebuild
On Saturday, October 30, about fifteen people who had gathered in Chicago for the Digital Excellence conference came together to brainstorm next steps for the community technology movement, with Michael Maranda doing the heavy lifting of organizing a space and guiding the discussion. Besides Michael, the group included Max Gail of LAP.org, Antwuan Wallace of […]
Digital Excellence 2010
In late October, I went to Chicago to join folks from across the country for DexCon 2010, the First Chicago Neighborhood Digital Excellence Conference, a convening of activists and others interested in community technology in Chicago. The major organizers were Pierre Clark, Thom Clark and Michael Maranda. It was a full day at DePaul University […]
The Containerization of the World
Two weeks ago I toured the Port of Tacoma in Washington State during the annual conference of the Society for the History of Technology. Tacoma is one of the top ten container ports in the United States, but it also handles specialized cargo and cars. Commencement Bay, which is a deep-water harbor in southern Puget […]
