As I work on the final revisions on the book manuscript while the publishers examine the camera-ready samples – I once again got caught in an archive search frenzy.

Also my continuing work and leisure in various mostly women-centered networks (because the practice of knitting and related fiber craft is still gendered as a female activity) made me think back on the spoon collective listprocs I founded and ran in the 1990s – women-writing-culture, third-world-women and sa-cyborgs.
Discussions on that are still relevant – and suddenly I need to find archives if I am to historicize net presences of women writing and creating and connecting through the internets…

The other day it was:

So there’s this one word I am fixated on

temporarily, multi contextually, placing it in various relationships…

the day before that it was …

http://cyberdivalive.livejournal.com/109930.html

Yesterday, it was

and then …

today – I am back to leafing through pages in books (hardcopy and on kindle and google) searching for the “exigency” – two points in history – two totally different geographical locations that weave virtual and real in ways that pose yet again when is virtual and when real – why did these practices and focus on process (as opposed to product for sale) re- surge in this way…

and did one of these re-surgences further the binary of practice vs theory in this context

while the other blurred it in the moment – but continues the binary because of the impossibility of archiving without freezing?

yet can the practice be “re-surged” without resorting to archives – how is practice coded outside of bodily experience when intergenerational exchange and apprenticeship has been disrupted through modern modes of production and standardization?

perhaps I need to look for the relationship (sometimes hidden and barely visible and not always noted) of learning and doing intergenerationally – in spaces of so-called leisure…

Recently I wrote/published a bunch of articles on conceptualization of identity in Secondlife space – and am back doing further immersive ethnographies in various virtual worlds in relation to building monetary value for social identities and in relation trans-nations, inter-nations and the local and global. Some of what I write next will both contest and extend what I have written and published in the previous phase of immersive online and offline (and offline trans- rural as well as trans- urban “deep hanging out”) ethnographies.

As usual – some of this will be co-authored and other essays will be single-authored with a clear acknowledgement of its collaborative nature. Am working in bits and pieces with multiple groups of people both within and outside the Western academy as well as both within and outside virtual worlds.

Let the layered investigations resume (continue – actually they never stopped – but now that I have my first draft of the book manuscript on Technocultural Agency finally done – I am calling it phase two as I move this work into my next two book projects being developed)!

Mapping nodes where my research and personal journeys have (and continue to ) overlap online/offline

over the years …its mostly a personal journey on my own, not surprisingly.

Last week (not yesterday) on Saturday, I was walking the streets of London looking for an Internet Cafe where my first experience of a f2f meeting of friends (flesh meet we used to call them?) formed fully through online discussion spaces (this group were from the spoon-collective list “cybermind” http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/spoons/).

It was akin to meeting a group of pen pals – but with hardcopy snail mail letters we would not have shared the same letter with a *group* of people – some of whom we did not know we were “broadcasting” to since we were still writing as if we were writing one to one letters (I think I said something of this sort in my dissertation way back in the 90s when this was all new in my understanding and experience and it was considered a research “finding” through my cyberethnographic investigations)….

I had my 11/12 year old son with me then – and we both figured out the London underground to get there (this was our first actual venture into London city – previously we had only been at Heathrow airport en-route to the US etc) – and little did I know at that time, how much the online/offline social world would be shaping his skills and personality – future social and professional life. But knowing this and being aware of this in this very personal, applied, concrete and historically contextual manner makes me able to connect with how my undergraduate students (not just grad students) live through these contexts. The fact that I have many nieces, nephews and even a grandniece and grandnephew who are not only sophisticated with-body world travelers but are also sophisticated navigators of online/offline social networks in their personal, educational and professional lives, enhances this understanding.

I think how commonplace it is now to weave online and offline social networks and how the younger generations no longer think about this … and of course the social networks that form through each of the platforms (multiple and multifarious in present times) and software available in present times are of such a wide range…

Now, as I continue my ethnographic investigations in virtual worlds – am waiting for an upgrade again so I can re-join the 3D worlds and continue to follow the RMTs…

It would be another kind of personal journey, no doubt, if I also tried to stretch my mapping to physically travel through
all the places (not just the countries – but the actual places, nooks and crannies) I recollect from my journeys hopping from country to country in my childhood.

[excuse the sloppy erasures in the image below ]

From my post to Radha ki Betiyaan pvt blog:

Okay – even though everyone [on RkB] almost is on facebook and some are on twitter – and several of you may have individual blogs. And we have once again started mass emailing each other.

This is still a different way of being, communication in this “space” we call Radha ki Betiyaan.

I am returning to posting and getting a sense of how I feel as I post in each of my many blogs – or some.

So I blogged some research notes on my livejournal – that only a. has an account on amongst all of you – and has access to when I set it to a certain type of private post setting.

I will go blog again on my cyberdiva.org blog and other spaces (all semester my students and I have been on tumblr.com because we are class blogging there).

Facebook allows different kinds of interactions – scattered and sudden and on impulse even. Twitter allows me to be very very scattered with no dialogue until I or someone else on my twitter list chooses to (similar to facebook status responses – but not with such a potentially large audience – so its not that kind of theater).

I’ve noticed that many many in P’s generation and S’s generation have a custom of keeping public blogs. The public theatricality of bloggling, facebook and twitter (and I am not even getting into youtube here because I speak only of written text) subconsciously shaping their way of being…

Add to this mix the act of posting and typing via Iphone interface.

thinking aloud and ending abruptly as always with my thoughts in-progress (and this is part of the website culture that I started out in since 1990s and that continues now in blogger culture)…