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Spatial metaphors of the digital outside

This is a presentation that I held for a PhD-student workshop earlier this spring, which I now turned into a non-edited essay while procrastinating sending in my manuscript to my supervisors.

Digitalisation

Spark

The observation that was the starting point of my doctoral project was that it sure seemed convenient for universities to be able to assume that “everyone” could find their way around digital interfaces and thus be able to participate in online class during covid-lockdowns. And I was like, well I have internet and a computer at home because I’m a nerd who likes to play video games online and also read about video games online, and also because the internet has made me completely unaware of any other ways of engaging with society.

At the same time, I try to be quite careful when it comes to online privacy and the potential exploitation of my data by, frankly, all of the 3 websites that exist. I had floated the idea many times to stop using the private spying device that is the smartphone, but was hindred by just how completely expected it was for a person to have full access to the smartphone to be able to do stuff. And I’m not just talking about hobbies like doomscrolling either, but like, doing banking, or booking a time for vaccines, or accessing the CBT I had to do for social anxiety after a year of not talking to people face to face.

This all made me curious about the societal expectations of digitality.

Thorough

Digitalisation is generally understood to describe the process by which digital technologies become enmeshed in society—a digital technological transformation. The existence of such a transformation is very obvious, digital technologies are part of most processes that we engage in. But it is not just a one-to-one replacement of previous non-digital processes, but often an alteration of what the processes consist of. especially when the internet is involved.

One of the central changes here, is the enormous amount of data that is created when we use digital technologies. This data make things visible and archivable, ripe for profiling and exploitation. Also, this data travels spatially in new ways. Something that has come up recently is the discussion of if there should be a European debit card organisation, which is just one way of highlighting how much of our data is going through American companies. Which of course, has huge geopolitical implications.

Even if you do not yourself use digital technologies that much or at all; by accessing public institutions: libraries, tax-declaration, healthcare, school, you are created as a digital profile. Kuntsman and Miyake address this in Paradoxes of digital disengagement (2022): that it is simply impossible to not be made digital.

Capitalism

As it stands, there is now a very tight connection, on many fronts, between the capitalist mode of production and digitality. Digital banking and finance, digital management software (how many different online services do we use per day in our jobs), and the digital infrastructure of information and logistics that enable the globalised economy. (The common adage that the world is shrinking due to faster communications, is an indispensable piece of the global capitalist puzzle). If we are critical of the ways in which capitalism functions to exploit earthly resources and human labour in search of profit. Then we should also be critical of the ways in which digital technologies, produced by that exploitation, become entangled in our everyday lives. And this includes when public institutions become digital by default.

But within this large-level critical approach, the fact also remains that digital tools are obstacles. For people who are not digitally fluent, or who lack the resources to engage with digital technologies in the expected manner, a society that is digital by default is a disabling one.

Which brings us to my second topic, that of the how to describe these people who are hindered when digitality takes over. Finding a good term for this phenomenon and for these individuals does, kinda by necessity, veer into the realm of metaphor.

Metaphor

Space

Metaphor is a linguistic and analytical backbone of humanities and social sciences. We use them to make complex phenomena graspable. What I want to concentrate on here, is the spatial metaphor. We will talk more about spatial metaphors today, when we go into discussions about media landscapes, and public spheres, both of which try to capture concepts by making them spatially relatable. There could be an argument here that since humans are fundamentally spatially oriented, trying to understand complex phenomena will result in spatial explanations as they utilize our capacity for spatial imagination.

As someone who is engaged in the interdisciplinary project of geomedia or communication geography, I want to echo Salovaara-Moring’s (2006) notion that we should be deliberate in our use of space as an explanatory resource. Spatial concepts often carry a lot of connotation. Public sphere paints a picture of a uniform arena, an open and widespread space for anyone to engage in, which is of course not the case with the originating example of the classed and gendered coffee house.

Digital

Research about the topic of digital obstacles, non-digital practices, or whatever we call it, often describe this in terms of ‘disconnection’, ‘disengagement’, ‘refusal’, ‘non- or limited use’. All of which have their drawbacks. As previously mentioned, in a society saturated by digitality, it is just not possible to disconnect from or refuse the digital. This terminology also ascribes attributes to the position that are not necessarily there. One being the assumption of an active stance-taking away from the digital, rather than the position being a passive consequence of the world rapidly changing around you.

Outside

In my inquiry into this topic, I use the term ‘digital outsider’, which is novel, or alternatively, not at all established. I found one dissertation using the term, but in reference to people who use digital media as a way to socially perform criminality, in the Beckerian sense (1963). But somehow, digital outsider, as an opposite to digital native, seems to be pretty established in the German context, but nowhere else.

What is appealing to me about digital outsider as a term, is that it centres the positional aspects. It does not clearly point to a type of usage, not does it connote activity or passivity—it uses spatial metaphor to point to a social position in relation to the digital.

However, the same critique I levied at ‘disconnection’ and ‘disengagement’ earlier, could be applied here: no one is really ‘outside’ the digital if it is as thorough as to touch everything.

Beyond

This brings me to the aspect of thresholding, where would we draw the line between inside and outside? Because there is still difference in how people rely on digital technology in their everyday lives.

I’ve kind of done the smart and easy thing of just scribbling a line around the smartphone, and calling that the threshold. But I would like to utilise the spatial metaphor more efficiently by pointing to inside/outside not as a dichotomy, but as a spectrum of distance. Thus, using the concept of digital distance to describe the presence, or lack, of digital technology in the everyday life.

I have not theorized this further than this at this point. But somewhere in this I hope to make the move that famous wife-murderer Louis Althusser (1970) did with regards to the base-superstructure metaphor when he developed the concept of ideological state apparatus. He described this as an exercise in thinking about what the spatial metaphor represents and moving beyond this description to think about implication. Though I have yet to come that far.

Bibliography

Althusser, L. (1970). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation) (B. Brewster, Trans.). In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Monthly Review Press. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm

Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. The Free Press. https://monoskop.org/images/2/2b/Becker_Howard_Outsiders_Studies_In_The_Sociogy_Of_Deviance_1963.pdf

Kuntsman, A., & Miyake, E. (2022). Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button. University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.16997/book61

Salovaara-Moring, I. (2006). “Fortress Europe”: Ideological metaphors of media geographies. In J. Falkheimer & A. Jansson, Geographies of Communication: The Spatial Turn in Media Studies. Coronet Books Incorporated. https://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1534729&dswid=-8452

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plog_07

I was working on a text about tiktok self-censorship but it didn't go anywhere so instead here's a low effort plog about studying change from the perspective of social sciences.

I recently read Christine Hine's 2015 book Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday for a methodology course I took, and in it, the internet is framed as an axis of change. The internet/digitality as change is perhaps the main academic approach to the subject within the social sciences. The questions of 'how does the internet change our lives?' seems to be the most central one to answer on the subject. While it is always necessary to place social phenomena within a historical context, the centrality of change is at once speaking to the monumental effect of the widespread online (the before and after), and an academic sensibility with its feet firmly planted in the pre-internet. We simply cannot fathom the internet without the context of change.

While I certainly grew up alongside the internet, and saw how it changed the world as I too changed, the normative assumption of the internet as an agent of change seems a bit... unfit. The internet did not change me, because my whole life has been influenced by its emergence. And for my younger colleagues who soon will emerge in this field, this is even more true. Asking us how the internet changed is like asking how the coming of television changed us, or how the implementation of western capitalist hegemony has changed us. At some point when studying the contemporary condition, we will have to view digitality as an embedded part of our existence, and not as an outside force of change.

I do not here mean that the effects of the internet are not important to study. My own thesis project is certainly engaged in the narrative of digitalisation as a meta-process. But by speaking of internet primarily in terms of change, we imply the internet as an auxiliary to society. The effects of the internet are not (only/primarily) interesting in terms of what it has changed in a historical sense, but in what it does to society right now, what structures it implies, what relations of power it demonstrates and produces.

It is easy to look at the internet and say that it changed a lot of things. But it is interesting to look at what what remains underneath. That is perhaps why Kornelia Hahn's 2021 book Social Digitalisation: Persistent Transformations Beyond Digital Technology was so refreshing to me. In it, she looks at digitalisation not as a process of introducing new technologies, but as a longitudinal process of social imagination. It is in the vein of Weber and Foucault, of diving deep into how structures of bureaucracy and thought shape society, and enable the emergence of certain kinds of machine.

When I look at the digitalisation of public transit, what I often find is that the underlying idea persists, but it can be done faster or with more surveillance using the internet. At the end of the day, there are still time-tables for departures and arrivals. Perhaps this institutional lingering can be something that makes it interesting to approach the internet from a perspective of change, to see how the structures of bureaucracy creaks against the force of instantaneous and traceful communication. But then we are perhaps looking specifically at how things do not change.

idk, maybe my brain has been steeped in Marxism for so long that the only change it will recognize as meaningful pertains to relations of production. But I cannot help but to see how, despite so much being different, not much has fundamentally changed in a long time.

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Förlusten av tidtabeller

Kolla här:

Är man någorlunda intresserad av SJs linjer ser man kanske det dumma i denna resa som SJs reseplanerare föreslog. Men bara för att vara säker slog jag också upp tåg 642 i trafikinfo för den dagen.

Mycket riktigt så avgår SJ intercity mellan Kristinehamn och Hallsberg just i Karlstad. Detta är dock inte den resan som föreslås, utan istället vill reseplaneraren att man tar en avgång som går 20 minuter tidigare och innebär ett onödigt byte.

Reseplanerare är ju behändiga när det kommer till att få en överblick över komplexa resor med flera byten. T.ex. bara några minuter innan denna incident så föreslog SJ en resa med Värmlandstrafiks tåg 70 och Länstrafiken Örebros regionalbuss 593 som fick mig att tjoa, för den hade ju varit väldigt svår att hitta för mig på egen hand. (Men vill man verkligen ha transcendentala reseförslag så rekommenderar jag alltid Samtrafikens Resrobot).

Men just den här typen av konstigheter, onödiga byten, långa väntetider, omvägar, får mig att sakna viss tillit till reseplanerare. Då det det ju skönt att regionaltrafiken i regel har tidtabeller man kan konsultera, för att få en uppskattning av hur ofta och när en viss linje faktiskt ska gå. Men för SJ...

Yeah... Detta ger ju bilden av att SJ har bespoke reseplanering utan repetitioner dag till dag. Vilket ju till viss del stämmer för det kan verkligen vara stor variation när det kommer till SJs avgångar. Jag förstår också att man inte kan lita på tidtabeller som sin enda källa för det är så mycket som händer konstant inom tågtrafiken att man i princip behöver ha ett informationsflöde för att kolla spårarbeten och förseningar. Och på sommaren kan man lika gärna strunta i det för då är allt kaos ändå.

Samtidigt så är det ju faktiskt så att avgångarna går efter en tidtabell i grunden. Jag har pendlat såpass mycket mellan Göteborg och Karlstad att jag vet att tågen går varannan timme, udda från Göteborg, jämna från Karlstad. Och att vissa avgångar saknas under helgen. Att ha denna typ av tidtabells-kunskap gör det möjligt att grovt planera sina resor i huvudet innan man gör sökningar i reseplaneraren. För mig handlar det om att jag kan ha en överblick över trender, som underlättar navigationsprocessen. Dessutom tycker jag det är enklare att ha all info på ett ark än att använda reseplaneraren som är ett rörligt gränssnitt vars huvudsakliga funktion är att sälja biljetter (man behöver ju klicka upp resedetaljer för att se vilken väg som föreslås).

Att SJ inte har tillgängliga tidtabeller kan möjligtvis bero på att de vill gardera sig mot kritik när avgångarna oundvikligen frångår tabellen. När alla resenärer tvingas söka i reseplaneraren så ser de ju alltid aktuell information (i teorin i alla fall), och kan då inte sedan komma och klaga på att tidtabellerna är fel. Men att kräva att resenärerna gör sökningar har även fördelen att de kan samla in data över söktryck på specifika start--slut-kombinationer. Ju fler interaktions-val man gör som användare av en digital tjänst, desto mer data som kan användas för att utvärdera och utveckla tjänsten.

Meta-processer som förlusten av tidtabeller kan kopplas till är atomisering/individualisering och digital sublimitet.

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Nolltaxa och ungdomar

Fagersta avslutar initiativet med gratis kollektivtrafik i kommunen, rapporterar Bussmagasinet (6/8, 2024). Kommunen har sedan 2018 haft nolltaxa, men den S-ledda kommunstyrelsen har nu alltså valt att ge upp, vilket de hävdar är på grund av att alltför många ungdomar reser med bussarna på ett stökigt sätt.

Detta resonemang förvirrade mig, som kommer från Göteborg där alla skolungdomar reser gratis i kollektivtrafiken på vardagar, och där ungt stökande inte är del i den diskursen. Till detta bör tilläggas att gratis skolskjuts ingår i skollagen, men tillämpas olika beroende på kommun. Skollagen villkoras självklart inte av ungdomarnas beteende, vilket är värt att ha i åtanke när vi funderar på att begränsa ung rörlighet utanför skol-sammanhang.

Att stökiga ungdomar överhuvudtaget är ett problem i kollektivtrafiken ser jag framförallt som ett symtom på vad som verkar vara ett ständigt förekommande problem, nämligen bristen på konstruktiva aktiviteter för unga. Fritidsgårdar är utbredda, men verkar inte heller ha resurserna eller kapaciteten att hantera allas behov.

Grunden i denna problematik är att unga är en politiskt förtryckt grupp. De är maktlösa gentemot sina omständigheter. Unga har dessutom fördelen att inte ännu ha blivit mentalt nedbrutna i ett människofientligt system. I Foucauldianska termer så är de i ett omvälvande skede i disciplineringsprocessen, och har inte fullt accepterat den hegemoniska ordningen. Unga känner av sitt förtryck, men de har svårt att artikulera dess specificitet. De vet att det finns en stor orättvisa, men har svårt att urskilja vart de kan rikta sin ilska, och istället slår de mot allt som heter auktoritet, inklusive ordningen ombord på bussar.

Givetvis så finns det sätt att kuva denna rastlöshet, exempelvis genom övervakade fritidsaktiviteter och mer kontroll och begränsningar i ungas förmåga att röra sig. 'Lösningar' som gör förtrycket och frustrationen mer påtaglig. Att rikta om ungas energi till dedikerade lekstugor är taget från samma spelbok som Adorno och Horkheimer kritiserar i The Culture Industry, nämligen underhållning som en distraktion från förtryck. (Jag vill här inte undergräva den politiska potentialen som finns i lek, men att flytta lek till gömda platser är just att beröva den genomslagskraft.)

Det är en klyscha inom vänster-debatt att alla problem löses genom världsrevolutionen, och jag vill inte peka på lösningar som förutsätter paradigmskiften, utan istället tar steg åt det hållet. Vad fallet med 'gratis bussar blir ungdomsgårdar' indikerar är ju dels att det såklart är nice att åka buss, dels att unga behöver platser som de vill hänga på, och slutligen att de behöver en riktning att uttrycka sin frustration i. Oartikulerad ilska kan vara svår att omvandla till omtanke, och komplexiteten i samhällets systematiska förtryck gör det svårt att identifiera användbara sätt att agera. I slutändan tror jag det handlar om att ge unga verktyg som de kan använda för att bemöta sitt förtryck, och en viktig del i den processen är att öppna vägar in i demokratin genom att låta unga ta plats som medborgare.

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PLOG_06

Resisting status

It has now been two months since i started this position. And i feel like i've gotten the hang of the base level administrative stuff. In total i need to do the equivalent of three full time semesters of courses in the span of the 4 year project. i've started looking at courses and there is so much fun stuff out there hhhhh

I've learnt that there are two formats for dissertations. One being the typical monograph, a book examining the topic. The other being a compilation, where you write some articles and bind them together. I think i'm going with the monograph route. Partly because the compilation is technically better for your academic career under the regime of measurements, and i'm a filthy contrarian (i have never made decisions depending on what is best for my hypothetical future career (majored in philosophy and antique languages), and i certainly won't now!). And partly because digging down in a big text is just sort of the point of doing a phd in the first place. Buut this might change ofc

For the course in contemporary debates that i am currently in i've gotten quite a bit into the final essay. It took a while before i remembered how to think when writing academically, but now that i'm in it again i kinda understand why i wanted to do a phd so badly. But this brings me into a topic that has been on my mind a lot recently: prestige in work. The question of status in labour is central to the whole life-project. You go to school to get good grades to get into good secondary and higher educations so that you can eventually get a job that you want. The way that the competitive school is built up relies on a hierarchy of jobs, if there was no hierarchy there would be no competition for the 'best' educations and jobs. There is a reason why it's so difficult to get into medical school. Scarcity reinforces status, etc.

Here the humanities have a unique position. Because the obvious lack of directly connected job markets, education in the humanities is not that high in demand. So if you're interested in those fields of study, pursuing a phd is kind of an obvious goal as it is one of few jobs where you get to do humanities. But because positions are scarce and competition high, there is a sort of meme that once you get a higher education in humanities, it is still likely that you'll work in the same kinds of jobs as you would straight out of high school. That is, undervalued, low paid, rough work, typically in service industry. Being a marxist saves your mind here, because you realise that there is nothing inherently less valuable to working service than it is to do a typical 'middle class' job. And it is with this mindset that i approach my phd. There is no right answer to life, and i am fully ready to quit if it turns out that this job is bad. At the end of the day, this is just a job, and I won't be torturing myself over it. "If it sucks, hit da bricks."

So, one topic i'm writing about for the course essay is 'knowledge work' in digital media labour studies. 'Knowledge work' being a run of the mill categorization along the lines of 'skilled vs unskilled work'. But it is fascinating to see how self important many academics are. Don't get me wrong, it is important to be proud of what you do. But if you want to actually resist capitalist ideology, you need to let go of the notion that you can 'make it' in your career. There is no individual victory state. I am not a better person than anyone else because i have this job, i am not more special, the work in itself does not have values which translates over to me as a person. It is kind of surprising (maybe not) that these are opinions that makes me disagree with some seemingly fundamental aspects in the digital media labour studies field, given that it is generally critical of neoliberal developments. oh well. I'll definitely post the essay when it is done (deadline's in May).

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PLOG_05

Everything so much

I moved three days ago but it feels like it has been weeks. I was super nervous all of saturday while packing. Then sunday came and I had to say goodbye to my beautiful wife as I got on the train with my three stuffed bags. The ride was nice. I love trains.

When I arrived at the station I was immediately lost. I don't use a smartphone, part of the project ig, which means navigating in a town that I've never been to is a real challenge. I wandered around for a little bit until I found a phone number to the public transport customer service, and after a few minutes in a phone queue a very nice person helped me with direction to the bus and from the bus stop to my apartment. Paying for a ticket on the bus is double the price compared to using a fare-card or buying a ticket in one of the kiosks, but what the hell, it got me to where I needed to be.

The problem with living in the outskirts of town is that there are no grocery stores nearby, so food shopping will need to be a more mindful activity than before. But that is also a great motivator for finding a place that is closer to the town centre. Though at least the walk to work is real nice, following a pretty straight-forward path through the woods (the way that everything here kind of is in the middle of the woods). Being this close to nature is great for my spirit, and I can't wait to get a bike here so I can utilize the, quite frankly, amazing bicycle pathways.

I managed to navigate to the correct building once I got to campus, and after being lost for a bit I found the office of my supervisor. Then everything is kind of a blur, meeting a whole swath of new colleagues, seeing a lot of university hallways and rooms. Aside from my supervisor I also have a faculty mentor, and one of the recent phd grads have taken me under their wing to show me the general ropes. Office, keys, computer, logins, and a bunch of administrative stuff, on top of trying to remember names and faces and positions, has left me a bit overwhelmed. But I'll find my footing eventually.

Abbreviated list advice I've gotten (and remembered):

Be here during office hours and then GO HOME

Find a system for taking and organizing reading notes so you don't have to do double work

Take it easy in the beginning, things will fall into place

Be confident in your abilities

Do not be afraid to ask for clarifications and help

It's okay if your project changes directions

Take note of all your responsibilities for future postdoc applications

I've also been contacted by (and joined) the Grad Student Association (GSA). It's kind of like the union! It seems really cool and I look forward to be more involved once I've caught my footing.

It's so weirdly amazing to have discussions about science in the break room, and listening to other phd-students talk about their processes and stuff. I was asked to take a look at what courses I would be interested in teaching for, and that suddenly made this whole thing very real. Like, yea I'm fr going to be teaching students in the not too distant future.

Today there was a department meeting and I got to present myself, which I was a bit nervous for. But I'm told that I made a good impression. Everyone is so welcoming and seem genuinely excited and happy to have me here, which is so cool and makes adjusting to all the changes happening a whole lot easier to adjust to.

I am going home this weekend and it will be beyond nice to see my wife again.

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PLOG_04

the hectic start…

I now began my employment one week ago, and it's been all studying. The course is on contemporary debates in media and communication studies, which has been a good orientation to the discipline for me as someone who comes at it from the outside. And of course I managed to catch a cold during reading, nothing beats ploughing through dozens of articles with a runny nose. But I did it! Some highlights were: Watson's description of mixed methods braiding (2020), because I've been thinking about doing something like that for my project, and working with artistic research is also very compelling; O'Neill and Hubbard's project on walking as method (2010); and Romic's discussion about the artistic production of machines (2022).

I met up with my new colleage who starts as a PhD student next month. I usually have issues with social interaction in big groups, so it was really nice to get to know one person before the course started.

We were like 16 phd students for this course, with many working with more typical MCS subjects like journalism and media portayals and such. But it is nice to feel like I'm bringing something unique to this discipline. The seminars were interesting but it is a lot to have six of them in two days. It's also a shame to not be able to really deep-dive into the subjects. But we're digging deeper in our exam essays so that'll be really fun!

It feels special to be part of this group of people who are in a way the actual future of the research in MCS in Sweden. So it's nice to get to know the other people who are doing this very niche job.

I've also managed to secure a place to live! I'm moving in just a few days so that'll be interesting. I'm excited to see the town, and the university, and getting my office, and seeing my colleagues. So many new things. It doesn't quite feel real yet.

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References under the cut.

O'Neill, M., & Hubbard, P. (2010). “Walking, Sensing, Belonging: Ethno-Mimesis as Performative Praxis, Visual Studies, 25, 46-58. Romic, B. (2022) “It’s in the Name: Technical Nonhumans and Artistic Production”, Transformations 36, 38-54(http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2022/03/Trans36_03_romic.pdf). Watson, A. (2020). “Methods Braiding: A Technique for Arts-Based and Mixed-Methods Research”, Sociological Research Online, 25, 66-83.

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PLOG_03

The project

I realised that I've not yet addressed what the topic of my dissertation is! My position is at the centre for geomedia studies (geography + media), which is a huge part of why I was drawn to this particular institution. Because if there is one thing above all else that I enjoy in academia, it's interdisciplinarity. I did my bachelor in Liberal Arts and my master in Cultural Studies, both fields of study which are interdisciplinary at their core. So doing a project that combines cultural geography with media studies inspiring.

My relationship to technology is one of curious admiration. I love old machines, and new machines also. They are systems in their own right with a lot of design intricacies, and seeing how it all comes together is fascinating. And then the machines are also part of human's affective network, we develop relations to our machines, as they become actors in the fabric of our lives. This is why I get a bit upset whenever an actor in a position of power asks me to install an app on my phone. Because my phone is a piece of companion tech, not something I have to be able to interface with my workplace or state organisations.

So I just kind of stopped using my smartphone, out of spite. Because I'm a contrarian and I don't think that organisations should assume that I have a smartphone, or that I'd want to use their app. I don't want rely on commercial tech companies to be able to navigate society.

Another thing that I love is public transportation. I like to explore the world, and PT empowers me to do so. But we also live in a society (nice) which requires mobility of its citizens. You need to go to work, school, the store. And PT is supposed to enable us to meet these requirements with dignity. And We also need to move away from the reliance on cars as the primary mode of transportation if we want to not burn down the whole planet. So there's a lot at stake with PT. And with all this weight on its shoulder, PT managers are of course running it as a profit driven business, paying marginal attention to the democratic demands related to PT.

And here the two things combine into the a focal point for my project: the public transportation smartphone app. Used as a navigation planner, information service, and ticket manager, it is clear why the PT app has been adopted by every single PT manager in Sweden. But the app is not merely used as a support to other means of reaching information or getting your ticket, it has become the centre of managing the information system around PT. With many PT managers pushing for their apps to be used by as many travellers as possible.

So what if you don't have a smartphone? Or what if you have one but you don't have the technical literacy to use it as intended? Or what if you simply don't want to install the app? How does the push of the app affected the availability of PT services for these citizens? And how do they perceive this marginalisation? These are the types of questions I am going to address with my project.

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PLOG_02

First course

I thought I was going to get a slow start due to me starting this job working distance, but apparently i'm already off to the races, (even though I haven't signed the contract yet.) My thesis supervisor contacted me, suggesting a course to read this spring, which has its first conference in one-and-a-half weeks. This means i've got a bit of reading to do already. It's not too much, only about 350 pages. But still, I was not prepared to get back into studying already. Though i think it's actually quite nice to actually do something after a while of just waiting.

During my last study period i realised that, for reading, i much prefer to use the computer over my tablet. However, for years i've been using the same pdf annotating software on my tablet and switching to computer reading means heading into the jungle of pdf software to find something reasonable. After about a half-hour bout with the wilderness i found that Zotero, the reference manager i've been using since undergrad, now has a built in pdf annotator. glory to the heavens above.

idk how phd-courses are usually structured but this one has two pairs of packed seminars a month apart, held at two different unis. So first thing for me to do is book travel and accommodations (which the department pays for), which is something I've never done with a job before. So i have no idea what is customary when it comes to levels of expenditure. Thankfully my supervisor was happy to answer questions and now i have a hotel room booked! And! i get to ride the train for Free!!

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PLOG_01

Beginnings

Today I've spent the evening fixing up the tumblr and the neocities page. I think they are now serviceable, even though there is always more work to be done. But, this is bc i wanted them ready as i take a step into a new phase.

Last october i spent a lot of time writing a research proposal for a phd-position, to the point that i failed my classes and quit my job as a barista. This was my second application to be a doctoral student. The first one i did last spring. i got an interview for that one, but was the 2nd choice for it. Which is admittedly pretty good, and it gave me a lot of confidence for the future. Anyhow, in december i interviewed for the position, and a few days later the head of the department called and said that they wanted me for it. This meant that I would need to move towns (for the first time in my life), and begin a long-distance relationship with my partner of six years. Exciting and scary. BUT! just one more thing: i needed to be admitted to the research-student program, whose board were not to meet until mid january. So i've had a tense and nerve-wracking month while waiting for the results from that meeting. not knowing how much i could plan to begin the move, or be able to look for living-accommodations in the new town, or knowing if i would need to move away from my wife.

After nervously looking at my phone for a week after the meeting was scheduled, today i got the news. all was clear. the closest thing to a dream job/career i have has opened up for me. so to kick of the typeslugs initiative, i have decided to document my journey in this phd-log.

More entries will follow as i stumble into grad-school for a second time, and have a big move for the first, and generally try to figure out what this all means.

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