Social Science and Design Questions.

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[Folks in CECE912 read Alex Halavais’ article on blogging that references Liz’s trip to Japan with her son. Have a look at Ross’ post on m2m about their symposium. The m2m crew always have interesting things afoot.]
Social Science and Design Questions. Many-to-Many: :

Last week Liz organized the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium. I shared some raw notes here, and here is a good gaming summary, but most of the activity was in a private Socialtext wiki. Among other things, Clay and danah held a session on the lingering questions in our field. This should tease out what work is already done or in progress, but I thought they may be thought provoking at the least:

Social Science Questions

* How can we measure the success of different types of online communities, and their survival and prodictivity and various criteria?

Does ADHD Exist?

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This is an interesting topic. I have ADD/ADHD. All my life. The question of its existence is not an issue for me, ADHD is a descriptive of a state, not a pathological designation. It may be a disease, but that’s not my issue. [and this is my personal, not professional opinion] That is, you need to recognize it and engage it, not drug it and ‘fix’ it. To me it IS a social construct… no less than genius or all of the descriptions of intellectual impairments; that is we have created these constructs to deal with something that pre-dates the construct. I don’t get why this is a problem to people, but people sometimes seem to want unassailable truths.

Myomancy: Does ADHD Exist?: “This is not as stupid a question as it sounds. We can’t do a blood test or brain scan to diagnoses ADHD so how do we know it exists? Yes some children are more active than others and have worse concentrations but does that mean its a disease, a mental health problem needing billions of tablets to treat? Is a ADHD a social construct?”

Failure! Failure!

Originally published at .... You can comment here or there.

I was presenting at the Learning & Teaching Office’s faculty conference today. I’ll upload the podcast and PPTs for it in a bit; you’ll understand why I’ve not done it yet in a moment.

I get into RCC 204, open my laptop and FIZZpopBlort! Whoshing air from an over burdened fan. Funny ping of death beep. And nothing. But the show must go on. Dead laptop. NO tech support. Not even a conference organizer about. Rule #1: Always have a backup. My presentation was on CD, so I got another puter, and away we went.

Presentation went very nicely. Everyone was polite, and there were interesting questions… but my mind was a bit torn… what about my data?

Over the next 4 hours I was trying to get the computer to boot into ‘target mode’ so that I could use it as a hard disk. It would not boot up otherwise.

I got about 3 minutes to get data off, then it would die. Over and Over. I lucked, finally into about 10 full minutes where I could get the rest of it off. Then it died and would not return.

Three weeks left on the warranty. New logic board and harddrive in a couple of days.

I’m presently using my iPod for all my computing. I’ve got my desktops convinced that my iPod is /user/jason/*

Wheeeee….