I’m not writing to this blog much nowadays. You can see some of my recent projects on my site.

4/26/07

12:17 AM
i was just on facebook for 30 minutes stalking people
BAD

Tikva:
when you stalk people, what are you looking for?

Betty T:
nothing, really
to feel good about myself
to see who they still hang out w/ or who they’re dating
its kind of like reading my own personal tabloids

12:20 AM

Tikva:
hah
that’s a funny metaphor
yeah its a bad habit
i do it too
why does it make us feel good

Betty T:
the info on facebook is phenomenal

Tikva:
really?
like what?

Betty T:
it is like CONNECTION OVERLOAD
this is an example of the news feed on my home page:
[the following info is from “Betty’s” Facebook News Feed. It is edited as not to reveal real identities:]
8:51pmSarah Palm joined the group PENE. 8:50pm
Tyler Pong joined the group My Lovely Elephant. 8:28pm
 Roman Sire and Robert Kagh are now friends. 8:08pm
YaYa joined the Berkeley network. 7:28pm
 Diana Krall and Steven Myers are now friends. 6:30pm
 Hope Cook is SICK??! 6:10pm Diana Krall joined the group America thinks Starbucks should deliver. 5:50pm
 Rebecca Fox and Lauren Smith are now friends. 3:54pm
 Kristin Palmer attended David Bowie at Radio City Music Hall. 3:37pm
 Andrew Custard joined the group Indie Run. 3:17pm
 Meghan Myers and Charles Ross are now friends. 2:01pm
Tom Anderslice and Richard Prince are now friends. 


it makes me feel good because…..
…… 95% of the people i’m “friends” with i dont talk to
we just acknowledge we’ve known each other in a past life and if opportunity arises maybe we will get to know each other better
but for the most part these are people from high school and college
and most of what people are doing is super lame

most things from the past, i would want to forget
but it’s the gossip that lives on… the image of how you thought people would turn out even if you didn’t know them very well
it’s completely sensational
when i go to some old acquaintance from high schools profile page, i either think “totally predictable” or i’m surprised in an unexpected way
that’s the pay off maybe?

Tikva:
when someone is doing well that you know, and don’t know well, what happens then?

Betty T:
i just think “interesting” and put that at the back of my head for later. then if i’m in conversation w/ someone who knows that person later on, i can pull that out and be like “did you know so and so is doing THIS?
or so and so is dating THIS person?
or so and so is gay?

Tikva:
haha

Betty T:
totally sensational shit

Tikva:
right
for me, i look around to see who knows who, to see people i barely know- what is their life like, to wish i knew them better
maybe you can come up with an interesting intervention for that
i wonder what that would be
what would work for you?

Betty T:
for me i don’t get the feeling that i wish i knew people more
it distances me even further away from them
like, i know enough info about their lives already so i should just focus on the people that i already know

Tikva:
would an intervention for you be to stop lurking through f-o-f’s pages and even friend’s pages and make contact with them instead?

Betty T.:
but i wouldn’t know if i could be committed to keeping in contact with that person
12:40 AM

Tikva:
i mean if you were “to focus on the people you already know”?

Betty T.:
and not spy on people?

Tikva:
Yeah

Betty T.:
forever?
i dont do it all the time
only when im trying to procrastinate
like right now

On April 26, 2007 10:58:34 AM EDT

I’ve been off now for about 48 hours.

I uninstalled skype so I wouldn’t be logging in. Last night I started to feel liberated from technology. I also have spent this week off of AIM as well as turning my phone off during ‘business hours’ and only checking messages at night. I’ve been seeking out people I want to talk too instead of just sending a message..

I feel free. there is an odd sense of freedom, I feel I am not bound to anything, without my phone on, without AIM people have had to physically seek me out at school or home to interact and vice versa. It has to be ‘important’ enough to ‘make the effort’ to email or find me. I went home last night from school and didnt turn on my laptop, I checked my cell messages, turned my phone off and went to bed without my laptop to chat with. I read, I did some knitting and wrote- on paper.

I felt like I was on vacation, I didnt feel the expectation of having to be connected and today I sit here without AIM on or my cell phone on or skype on and I feel as if life is quiet again..

My relationships are shifting dynamically because of my choices.. I am forced to talk to people face to face, to spend time finding someone I care about to say I love you in person, to make ‘dates’ via emails to talk to people.. I found telling someone i love you in person is much more powerful then ever saying it on skype- even when it means the same things.

On Apr 24, 2007, at 10:43 AM:

I think Im going to try another skype free period again.

I’m not telling [my boyfriend] or anyone else on my skype about it, I’m just going to disappear from online for a bit. I’m beginning to realize if I don’t reach out to people they just won’t reach out to me. Last time I spent 4 days ‘off’ of skype and my ‘presence’ was not missed or even noticed by anyone.
Perhaps this is conducive to the culture which we live in, we assume if someone isn’t online they are ‘too busy’ or on vacation, so we don’t make any effort to contact them otherwise even when we know them on a intimate level?

To add to the equation, my sister who lives abroad, is not contactable by phone, only skype or email. My boyfriend recently canceled his phone making the only real way for me to contact him is from skype (literally, his phone is forwarded to his skype account). I find I call him 99% of the time, he doesn’t call me or email me unless it is only to reply to my call or email and rarely do I even call when skyping is much less invasive. Emailing him rarely gets more then a one word reply, if even that and I find communicating with him over anything other then IM to often be a really one sided interaction (I email or call and often get no reply or response).

See par of this is me: Im not good at asking for what I need, Im not good at taking up ’space’ in peoples life, I have spent a long time being and feeling I am not important enough to ask people to make the effort to ‘go out of their way’ and write an email or make a phone call. I am always ‘available’ (online) so they don’t have to be. This is why maybe I feel much more confident skyping or AIMing people, its a noninvasive non disruptive way to contact someone who is choosing to be ‘available’ without feeling like I might be ‘calling at a bad time’

I am a really really busy person and I know most of the people in my life are the same, when someone isn’t online, I often text or email them, but rarely will I call unless they are a close friend. I feel like a phone call in society right now is a way of saying ‘this is really really so very important, I had to hear your voice’ Phone calls are a dying artform.. they guarantee the other person hears and understands your message while text is often interpreted a cornucopia of ways or lost in the black hole of the net and we are left wondering if we were simply ignored or it just never showed up in someone’s inbox.

During this skype free period, I want to see if the people I contact the most, (especially during a really hard period of personal turmoil) go ‘out of their way’ (to email or call me) to contact me when I’m not ‘available’

so here we go, day 1.

Michael Delgaudio, 4/8/07 @ 11:19am
Q: Did you ever go “off” intentionally before (aside from travel)?
A: No, only when traveling. I mean, I make the decision to go off ever time I sit down to watch TV right? I consciously say, fuck this, I’m going to sit my ass on this couch for an hour and eat cheese. Part of the Nancy’s exercise was the duration. 3 hours! Thats an entire class. Thats 6 fucking episodes of The Office! Its hard to think of things that I do for that amount of time anyway. And we could watch TV or use any technology which mean we had to be entirely disengaged. However, mentally I we are still entirely engaged. Thats how I has able to do so much planning and thinking. I guess part of all this is that we feel like we need to be sitting in front of a screen to be getting anything done. When that’s entirely not true. I think it gets back to fact that technology is a tool. It can’t give you ideas. Ideas come from you and disconnecting can help you see those ideas because your not preoccupied with the screen in front of you.

Rebecca Bray - 4/9/07, 11:38 am

1. What did you get out of going “off”?

It was relaxing, and I was able to concentrate quite well (after a while).

2. What was the hardest part?

Not listening to music. Also the worry that I was missing an emergency phone call.

3. What was the easiest part?

I was reading and then drawing, two completely enjoyable things.

4. Have you done it again? Why? Why not?

I have not done it for that long again, but I would like to. Probably haven’t simply because I haven’t thought about it.

5. What emotions, if any, do you have with going “off”? With being “on”?

The idea of going offline seems relaxing. I associate it with focus and getting into something in depth, as opposed to online, which I associate with manic production and a constant need to avoid distraction.

6. Have you developed a practice that directly stems from Nancy’s exercise?

No.

7. Did you ever go “off” intentionally before (aside from travel)?

Yes - meditation, yoga, running as well as self-opposed retreats in the woods.

8. If you’ve traveled alone, was the experience similar for you?

Well, for me there’s a big difference between going offline but being out in the world, and going offline in a private space, alone. If I’m out in the world but in a place I know - not travelling, turning off my phone is not enough - I have to go with the intention of simply observing. Travelling creates that feeling instantly - I try to have little to no agenda and just BE. That’s a great feeling. If I’m alone, whether in my apartment or in a cabin in the woods, going offline is again more about intention than the physical act of turning off devices. I can turn everything off but still feel manic. It’s more about doing only one thing at a time, which is rare.

Sarah, 4/22/07 @6:25PM;
hey tikva,

so here’s a detailed explanation of my no-aim week:

About 10 minutes after I agreed to not have aim for a week, I kinda
freaked out. Well, maybe ‘freaked out’ is too strong of a word; but I
definitely felt like I had made a mistake in agreeing to do so, and
was not looking forward to it! I already felt the pain of withdrawal.
but i took note of this and decided to not be a wimp.

However, I signed on for like a minute, after we spoke. Then i felt
insanely guilty, and signed off. Then I signed on again later to tell
a couple friends what I was doing. After which they said ‘well what
are you doing here!!! sign off!”.

During the first couple days, I had a really itchy trigger finger; I
wanted to sign on so badly. I knew I was addicted, but this made it
strikingly clear how strong that dependency was. It also made me
realise how ADD I might be; I couldn’t go more than five minutes
working, without wanting to thinking about signing onto aim. so as
you could imagine, it was REALLY hard for the first two days or so.
And I admit, I totally cheated for like 5 or 10 minutes at a time,
about three times, during the first two days. It was just SO hard…
and I’m not of the strongest willpower, heh.

It didn’t end all forms of communication with my friends or Hai
though; they found ways to get around my not being on aim. Which was
interesting, because I just as well expected that no one would make
any effort to contact me at all, if i wasn’t online. Hai started
emailing me funny links that he’d normally aim me, among other little
notes. I thought this was really nice, as it made me think ‘aw, he’s
actually thinking about me, and going ‘out of his way’ to email me’.
Although then I thought about how it was strange that I considered
writing an email so much more work than typing into a chat box.
Perhaps it’s the illusion of ‘live interaction’ that chat clients
give us, that makes it seem so much less and thoughtful and less
‘work’ to say anything through.

My other friends, whom I had not told about the no-aim week, started
writing me through myspace, asking ‘where the hell’ i was. haha. The
people i expected to notice my absence, definitely did! It was
mainly, Hai, my mom, and my friend Jesse (who I didn’t mention
earlier; but I should have expected him to wonder where the hell I
was, since we trade links back n forth with each other all the time
over aim).

Unfortunately, it didn’t result in more telephone conversation with
Hai, but it did with my other good friend Kelli. I don’t really like
talking on the phone anyway though, so that wasn’t necessarily a plus
(not that I don’t like talking to Kelli! I just wouldn’t like it if
that was the main way I communicated with my friends on a regular
basis).

Overall, I’d say that I was still able to communicate just as much
with my friends and Hai as before. Everybody who talks to me
regularly just found alternative ways to get in touch with me. Which
like I said earlier, was nice, as I (maybe sadly) always assume that
most of us chat online just for the sake of convenience; not because
we really need to talk to each other.

So, as far as what I did with my time then: Naturally, I was a lot
more productive! I was able to focus more on my work, after I got
over the hump of the week. I felt as though I was beginning to
perhaps not fully break ‘the habit’, but at least take a step back,
and feel comfortable not being signed onto aim all the time. You have
to understand too, though, that most of my good friends are in San
Francisco still, so not being on aim makes me feel disconnected from
an important part of my life. In fact, I think that if aim wasn’t
around, I wouldn’t be able to stay as close to my west coast friends
at all.

But yes, I was able to concentrate much better on my work. I found
that I was using aim to procrastinate, and once I removed that
crutch, it kind of forced me to either just walk away from my
computer entirely (i.e. find another way to procrastinate), or to
just get the work done.

Since taking that break from aim, I’ve come back to being online a
lot of the time, but actually, not quite as much as I was before.
Also, the realisation that I was using aim as this tool of
procrastination made me a lot more aware of my actions, when I felt
like ‘chatting for just a second’ with a friend online.

Oh, also, I was able to stop ‘cheating’ after the third day. I was
really proud of myself haha. I guess all things get easier with time.

I don’t think I’ll continue talking more on the phone with my
friends, or even emailing more, as I was while off aim, but aside
from that not changing, I will definitely try to be more aware of how
much time I’m spending chatting, vs working. I guess ‘awareness’ is
the theme to everything I’m saying; my behavior isn’t drastically
changed from the intervention, but my awareness has been! Which is
always the first step to real change, right

So i hope that helped! If you have any more questions, let me know.

TIKVA 4/23/07, 2:15 AM:

More options Apr 23 (23 hours ago)
wow, you are so great to have gone into that much detail.
i am very grateful.

you said you found other ways to procrastinate but that you also got
more work done?
was it because AIM is considered to be a faster mode of communication
than email?

were you expecting that Hai would call you? were you disappointed
that he didn’t?

and yeah, it is about awareness.
what could you do to maintain being aware, you think?

and did you have the impulse to do this again or to do something like
it?

thank you sarah!

tikva

SARAH, 4/23/07, 5:38 PM

hey,

no problem.

so, yeah, i found other ways to procrastinate, but i still got more
work done because those other ways of procrastination still weren’t
as distracting as aim. and they took me away from my computer. so i
was either working, or procrastinating but still getting more work
done at the end of the day.

and yes, i think aim is a faster mode of communication, because
you’re able to send and receive messages in realtime with someone
else. which also makes it potentially never-ending. i can gab with my
friends for hours online, and there’s never any end to it, vs email,
which i usually don’t hold conversations over. well sometimes i do,
but it isn’t common.

i wasn’t really expecting hai to call me. i mean he’s never been big
on calling me in the first place. so i wasn’t too disappointed
either. but of course it would have been great if he had! and he did
actually call me once. and it was great. haha.

so i’m not sure what i could do to maintain my awareness. i think
that’s the part that will take discipline. i will just have to exert
a level of self-control.

so did i have the impulse to do something like an aim intervention
again? (or something like that?) not really hehe. although, i should.
even though i feel like i’ve been a lot better about focusing on my
work and staying away from chatting, i can still feel the tug to
glance at my buddy list when i’m stuck on something difficult while
working. it’s just such an immediate form of communication, it’s hard
to not think about it when i’m bored, or in the middle of figuring
out some problem with my code, etc.

it started out really hard.. the first three days were awful. i even snuck on a couple times for five minutes, but then felt guilty of course and immediately signed off, ha.

by the fourth day, it actually wasn’t as bad. my friends emailed me asking where the hell i was, which i thought was pretty funny. i got a lot more work done, and it was nice to not be distracted.

it basically just forced other ways of communication; i talked a lot more on the phone with my boyfriend, and emailed a lot more with my other friends.

since i started being online again this week, i’ve noticed much more how distracting it is, and it was good to have been off aim for the previous week, because it broke the addiction a little bit. i’ve definitely been on aim less even this week.

so that’s how the week was for me….

I found it sort of a dissapointment actually. My presence was not really missed from what I can tell. You know, I expected to have them try to reach out to me more and instead I found myself trying to reach out in other ways.
My sister said she did try to call me but for the most part the void of my online presence was only missed by me and not them.
I would like to know how long it would take of my absence for them to physically reach out to me. ..
anyhow, thats all for now

His most important relationships are his family and four friends that he’s known somewhere between 12 and 20 years. He met them through work, separately I believe. He emails one or two somewhat regularly, I think about once or twice a week; I think he talks on the phone everyonce and a while; and then the last one he hadn’t talked to “in a while” (many months).

He said he’s never restricted himself to one group. He said that he came from Yellow Springs, Ohio a town of 4,000 “where everyone knew everyone,”
In high school he can remember being friends with different groups and them saying things like, “Why were you hanig out wtih so and so?”
He thinks he picked networking up with his mom who would start relationships with anyone, as if she’d know them for years.

Here’s what Tucker said he got out of the interview on 4/14/07:
“There’s a lot of talk about digital technology changing our sense of space
and time - connecting all over the places all the time - there is no
distance between here and there.
But another idea that I thought about when we were talking is that the
normal central idea of time is that it is sequential and that no one can
change its march forward.
But I think that similarly to the scrunching of space - we now experience
time out of order - more than stuff like Tivo and global 24/7 - people eat
breakfast at lunchtime, work after diner, don’t work before lunch, go to
grad school before they finish high school, have sex before dating, drive
motorcycles after they retire, etc. etc.”

A very big part of my thesis is devoted to how “Connectors”, specifically, use technology to mediate communication in their lives. I’d interviewed and recorded Fred Benenson, Tucker Viemeister, Christian Schaal, Marianne Petit, Red Burns, Matt Jones and Clay Shirky on a brand new, hand-held recording device. Unfortunately, about a week after my last interview, I left for my Etech talk in San Diego, having packed my device and of the intention to upload my interviews once I got there so that I would have a back up.

I got to my friend’s place in San Diego, unpacked, and discovered it missing : ( I thought I was to blame for it having gone missing, and I’ve been embarrassed and feeling like shit ever since. It’s my thesis after all, and each of my interviewees graciously took 45 minutes out of their lives to be interviewed.

This week Rob Faludi gave me some relief while also giving me a very upsetting piece of news. It turns out that many airport employees steal from luggage! The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the organization accountable for the security of the US’s transportation systems who include the employees who conduct the passenger and baggage screening at the airport, has been under fire for theft.

As of last year, the TSA has acknowledged this and is taking serious measures. If you believe that you’ve had something stolen, go to the TSA site and follow their instructions. Here’s some of what’s on there:

“If a passenger believes that his or her property has been lost, damaged, or stolen due to TSA__actions, they are encouraged to contact TSA as soon as possible. Although a claim may be filed within two years of the event, the earlier a claimant contacts TSA, the easier it will be to investigate and make a determination on the claim. Potential claimants can get information about filing claims from a number of sources, including the TSA Customer Contact Center (866-289-9673), TSA’s public website (www.tsa.gov), and TSA’s Claims Management website (www.tsaclaims.org). These resources can provide potential claimants with the information and forms necessary to file a claim.”