I’ve historically been reluctant to link anything that owns my credit card details to my Facebook account. I am a much bigger fan of Facebook than many other people I know, who consider it too common in comparison with Google Plus, but quite frankly I don’t particular trust the former’s security. Having had my previous account hacked once probably didn’t help. I do use sensible passwords, thanks for asking – my long term housemate and one of my best friends is a network engineer with Opinions on internet security. 

This time, though, the concern that popped into my mind was not security, but quite another question. 

Why would I want to?

This question seemed particularly relevant especially considering that a few days ago I did link my Spotify account to my Facebook account, with no little trepidation, for the reason outlined above. And yet. I was an avid user of last.fm, my first encounter with streamed music and custom ‘radio’ some years ago (We never got Pandora in Ireland and Napster’s modus operandi was, uh, different). I did, in fact, enjoy seeing what my friends were listening to. I got to know many artists whom I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Sometimes the taste of music gave me a idea of the individual’s personality, especially if I didn’t otherwise know them very well. Is that approaching stalking too close for comfort? I don’t know. Is it different from reading their blog posts? But what if they have chosen not to blog, or tweet? Are they okay with me, even unconsciously, profiling them based on the music they listen to?

 I am probably just overthinking this.

 But. 

Somehow the prospect of sharing my moving image preferences seems even more personal. Maybe it is this whole notion of the power of the visual. Music is something that you just have on the background while you’re working or doing something else, right? A film or a tv show is something that most people would tend to focus most of their attention on. Sure, people knit or do housework while they have a tv programme on, I used to be able to read at the same time as well, before I stopped watching tv regularly. But if something’s on that you’re actually very interested in, you will be, for want of a better word, immersed in the programme. The visual of a film or a tv show is, then, potentially a more intimate experience than music. Yes, I can hear all the objections already, fine. Music will let you form your own images in your head, it has all sorts of wacky ekphrastic functions that I’m not going to go into right now because I don’t have time to write another PhD and, besides, other people have already looked into it.

People share their own photographs, you cry. Surely that is far more personal than sharing the fact that you just watched Lost for fourteen hours straight. (Fictional example. In my case it would more likely be the original Danish Killing.) People share news articles, cat pictures, naive exhortations to hugely significant political action by sharing and liking this emotionally manipulative image. (See? Here’s the visual again.) 

All the insecurities about what people might think about me if they see I watch ’80s action films aside, what is the benefit of seeing, for instance, on Facebook, what your friends watched, or letting them see what you watched? I would argue that people’s taste for visual entertainment is more narrow than their taste in music. They already tend to know what they like and what they don’t like. So I doubt the ‘new ideas’ function would much enter the play. Is it meant to be a conversation starter? ‘Hey, I see you just watched Lesbian Vampire Killers, how did it make you feel?’ Of course people want to talk about the things they like to do in their freetime, but, usually, in their own terms. They volunteer it. 

That, I think, may be the issue with ‘sharing’ your leisure activities in your social media. Beyond volunteering the amount of information about yourself that you’re comfortable with to have out there, by ‘sharing’ you are putting much more of yourself available, indiscriminately. You’re creating, not so much a digital copy of your personality, a motif beloved by sci-fi, as a bundle of yourself to be handed out and poked at, to be profiled and to be made conclusions from. Does everything you do, or like, need to be out there? If you want to have a quiet evening in, in your PJs, with a glass of wine and some ice cream, with maybe some candles lit, watching a favourite show or film, is not the illusion of that privacy and peace broken, in a way, if your internet communities have access to those hours of privacy? Quality time to yourself – but is it?

The unhelpful contribution:

1) Stop reading blogs about how to write, and just write. 

The helpful contribution (This’ll go on for a while):

1) Everything starts with preparation. You need to know your topic well – not perfectly, but at least have a very good foundation in it. Take your time with research and don’t worry that you’re not writing. The writing will come, once you have the knowledge. While you’re researching, think about what you’re reading, in preparation for the writing. Do you agree or disagree with the author/source? Are they reliable? What information has been made available since the publication of their work? How can you connect this to other writers and theories? Make notes. 

2) Plan your essay/chapter/paper. Write down a preliminary structure for it. It’ll probably change as you’re working on it. That’s okay. You don’t need to know exactly what you’re going to say, but it will help you considerably if you write down ‘Intro – [main point] [main point] [main point] etc [conclusion]. You can even try to assign target word counts for each, but at least I can never stick to those. The word count estimates may work as guidelines, though. 

3) Make your environment such that you’re comfortable to work in it. There might be more to the frantic desire to tidy up when a deadline looms than just procrastination. Some people require their workplace to be as short of visual clutter as possible, others like to be surrounded by comfortable mementoes and pep talk posters. Whatever works for you. You also need to be at a comfortable temperature, so dig out that college hoodie, if you need it. My husband often writes in a long lined hooded black velvet robe, made for him as a costume for some Halloween once. If you are like me and consume vast quantities of caffeinated drinks while you work, ensure that the kettle/coffee maker/ingredients are readily available. Any extra trip to the shop is a distraction. If you have children or clingy pets, unless you’re absolutely sure they won’t try to interrupt you, get someone else to look after them.

4) Write. Assign yourself an x number of words to accomplish each day you’re writing. Mine’s a 1000 words. Yours might be 700, or 500, or 300, or 1500, whatever works. Err on the side of caution. Writing Academese is hard and taxing. Take note of the 1/3, 1/2, and 3/4 points in order to give you a sense of accomplishment. Important: write now, edit later. Your mission is to accomplish the word quota. You can come back to it later for quality assurance. When you are done with the word quota, step away from the document and don’t think about it again that day. 

5) Have breaks. I’m very bad at this. I’ve had to install WorkRave (Windows only I’m afraid, I use Time Out Free on the Mac) to make sure I take a sufficient number of breaks. Mental health aside, I, as so many other researchers, are prone to RSI and regular breaks, during which you stand up and move around, are essential in preventing attacks. Use your breaks to make that coffee or tea, have lunch, go to the toilet, stretch, print out an article, and so on.  

6) Don’t try to write every day. Most other advice contradicts this, but I would argue that unless you absolutely have to write every day, you’ll burn out trying to do so. By all mean assign specific days of the week for writing – three a minimum – but don’t think that you need to write every single day. On other days you can do other relevant things: research, correspondence, administration, and, importantly, keep a day or two for wholly irrelevant things in order to retain your mental balance. You’ll get more done while your mind remains sharp and rested. 

7) The ephemera: good diet that works for you, plenty of water, enough exercise and outdoors, and don’t forget to meet your friends. A project such as PhD, or any other research project, is not separated from the rest of your life. The better shape you’re in mentally and physically, the better you’ll be able to handle the project as well. 

Just before Christmas I finished my second chapter and got feedback on it from my supervisor a couple of weeks ago. It was fine, with some little tweaks needed but nothing serious. We will review it again once I have compiled the entire thesis in draft form, and see if anything further needs to done at that stage. I spent nearly twenty thousand words in laying down and developing my theoretical framework. Obviously, I start with ekphrasis and the differences in its perception now and in Classical secondary literature, but I also bring in geocriticism and the reader-response theory. It was a lot of work and I had been very apprehensive beforehand, but also observed that this was probably going to be my most difficult chapter. I expect that the subsequent ones will be easier. I have started work on the third chapter and will be working on it for the next while. In it, I will examining the parallel development of virtual worlds in fiction and virtual worlds in the real world, and tracing the relationship between the two. 

In related ephemera, I have received an acceptance to the ‘Islands and Continents: (Re)constructions of Identity’ conference in Madeira 26-28 September, just sent an abstract to another conference and been preparing for two sessions on Eavan Boland’s poetry to the first year undergraduates in the first two weeks of the semester. I have marked some undergraduate essays and I still have a few MA ones to do. I’ll be interested to see the differences and similarities, both in good and bad, in the two different categories.

The site also includes videos of the two keynote speakers at the event. I was particularly impressed with the talk by Professor Jenny Williams, titled ‘Once Upon a Time in Academia: a survivor’s guide to research and publishing’. I took careful notes during her talk and ended up pinning the printout of the notes on my cubicle wall. The most useful advice she gave, to me personally, was ‘PhD is not your life’s work. It’s only the first step.’ I constantly struggle with my desire for perfection.

The Showcase process including the subsequent review and publication was a very helpful part of our training, and I look forward to the next one.

I will be taking the seminars on Graphic Novels and on Digital Ekphrasis (my own research topic) in the Literature and the Visual Arts module and a seminar on Myth and rewritings/retellings in the module called Comparative Literature: Approaches and Applications. There is a possibility that I might be doing an additional seminar, but my supervisor is wary of burdening me unduly.

I already gave a seminar on my research topic last year, but I expect that its content will change at least somewhat. I am at a stage where I accumulate new information at a constant speed, so that a paper I wrote a couple of months ago might now appear very different. It will be broader than I’d like, as it is my (or anyone’s) only opportunity to even mention electronic literature or interactive fiction in the MA programme. My focus will, however, have to lie on verbal representations of the virtual, as per my own project. I used Snow Crash as one of my texts last year, as it remains a good example, despite its age. This year I might try something else, or add an extract from Richard Powers’s Plowing the Dark, to which I was introduced by a colleague at the summer’s CLAI conference.

For the seminar on Graphic Novel, I am very conflicted. I am keen to show the quality of modern graphic novels and to point out what a respectable and respected art form it is in non-Anglophone countries (although I still don’t have an explanation for this). It could be argued that I have to do Maus, but I also really want to discuss some of the more recent options. Alison Bechdel’s work is an obvious choice, but it is likely to appear in another module. Joe Sacco and Marjane Satrapi are other likely authors, although I have not as yet read anything by Sacco, myself. Watchmen is a tempting option, but I am wary of perpetuating the ‘all comics are about superheroes one way or another’ fallacy. On a purely personal level I’d love to do Castle Waiting or Bone, but they’ll have to wait until I can dedicate an entire module to this!

Myth is also going to be challenging in the amount of available choice. I struggled a lot with my essay back when I was a student in this module, due to being unable to choose a suitable retelling that clicked with me. I should likely stick with the Classical world, as the Classical stories are most likely to be known to the fairly international group. In my ideal myth module, I would talk about Irish and Norse myths, as well as modern myths, both aged and also those that have recently appeared. I will likely choose something that deals with women, because of my feminist tendencies. Short stories would be the best text option for the students.

Maybe it is a sign of my freshness in these matters, or perhaps sheer innocence, but I am very much looking forward to these seminars and even the associated paperwork. I hope to get the opportunity to do more seminars in the second semester, but we shall see how things go.

It is perhaps less understood than non-programmers, too – even humanists – need compiling time. While the analogue of computer to a human brain is out of fashion and inaccurate, I find ‘compiling’ a useful term to describe the process that takes place after I have set out a problem and then let it brew for some time. I may be struggling with the next chapter structure, or how to make two sets of theories talk to each other. Or how to define a particular concept. Anything that starts out as a vague bundle of knotted threads, and that may, with some compiling time, emerge as a woven stretch of beautiful patterned band.

The trick seems to be to deliberately avoid thinking about the problem, at least directly. It’ll probably crop up in your mind every once in a while, just to demonstrate that the process is taking place. What seems to happen is that while your mind concentrates on something else, be it something productive and educating like visiting a gallery or a museum, or something lazy like taking a day or two off to laze around, enough space is created within your head for the problem to percolate and shape itself in peace. A kind of ‘sleeping on it’ while being awake. At some point, the problem resurfaces, transformed, and you may be able to view it with much more clarity. I came up with a definition for a particular concept I’d been struggling with while taking a summer school in something completely different. Various forms of intellectual stimulation and inspiration feed each other.

This has been a long-winded way of saying, hello, I’m back from June’s conference and my summer holidays! Ready now to tackle the incoming second year of my PhD with full strength.

Naturally, I have encountered many things to blog about during that time. I downloaded my old favourite game, Arcanum, from Good Old Games, and was struck by how much single-player mechanics have changed in just over a decade. I want to poke at that at some point.

However, right now I just want to note that Varytale has just gone to public beta (they like you to have a Facebook account to log in with – evil I know). For anyone interested in interactive fiction or the reader/text relationship this is an absolute must. They even helpfully provide an introductory book, How to Read A Varytale Book to introduce to the concept those who might not have any experience on such things. I am finding that it is also helpful for those who have read other interactive texts or played games like Fallen London (which will always be Echo Bazaar for me, dammit!), as there are new mechanics here at play.

I am really excited about this, and about all the other new IF stuff that is currently in the process of coming out. The author may be dead, but this genre most certainly isn’t… If I at some point manage to bag myself a course to teach on text and visual arts, or literature and the internet, my students will be spending a lot of time on these websites.

I have a thing for AIs. I couldn’t even tell you why. The prospect of having a natural, or a near-natural, conversation with a machine tickles me no end. It’s not even a Pygmalian or a Frankensteinian desire to create something of my own – I’m all too happy to leave the creation end to Apple or to Google or to any other future corporate giant. I want to be able to talk to the machines with which (whom?), it could be be said I’m already having an intimate relationship. At my panel at ACLA we briefly discussed about how much of our personalities we extend to the internet. Not in the “uploading your personality” way, although I mistook the Chair’s meaning for that at first, but, I think, in the sense of extending our sense of self to the things we do in social media and elsewhere. We didn’t have the chance to talk about this extensively and I would love to hear/think about it more. Surely, then, if we put part of ourselves online, we must develop strong feelings for our means of accessing those aspects of ourselves. And consequently, surely we must want to be able to converse with those means – that personal technology, and, by extension, ourselves – as we would with a human. When we watch monkeys, we are amused, because they remind us of ourselves. Is it, then, that we want to be able to talk to our machines because we want to be able to converse with ourselves?

Perhaps following that aforementioned Pygmalian way of thinking, the majority (I would argue) of AIs and VIs  in film and literature have been female, particularly in terms of the “disembodied machine voice” concept. Offhand, I can only think of HAL and Gigolo Joe, who have been male. And, admittedly, Marvin, from the Hitchhiker’s Guide. The idea of the “female” AI is so ingrained in my mind, though, that the male voice of the British-localised Siri was very odd. Happily, I switched to the female US voice, thinking that it would understand my “can’t” rather than “cah-ahn’t” a bit better. Which it seems to do.

While Siri manages better than many other voice recognition software, it certainly has its struggles. My Finno-Hibernian accent doesn’t give it as much difficulty as I feared, but it took a long effort of both of us for it to understand my pronounciation of its name, which it kept hearing as “city”. It’s also clearly of limited use outside the US; for some reason it’s unable to read maps elsewhere, and it can’t provide information about restaurants and the like. While it has amused me well enough, I wonder how much of actual use I will get out of it.

I hope that in ten years’ time we can look back at the first Siri and shake our heads like we do at minidiscs today. A good attempt, but something that was lost as something more convenient, more workable and easier to use came along. In audio entertainment, it was the mp3s, with voice recognition and AIs – who knows? At least I’ll be able to become whatever has evolved out of hipsters in the 2020s and tell people that all of us Siri-owners were playing the game before AIs were cool.

James Gee talks about future of higher education and learning through embodied experience

Kenneth Rosenberg responds