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I am virtually attending BlogHer. You can do it, too!!

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THE CONFERENCE

Post-conference comments

Listen to the podcast at ITConversations (the podcast for “Get naked” is out, the others to follow in the next few weeks)

[This post will be updated throughout the day]

July 30, 2005 | Filed Under Blogging, Women | 3 Comments 

The lonely universe

About 100 billion years from now, all but the closest of galaxies will be dragged away by the swelling space at faster-than-light speed and so would be impossible for us to see, regardless of the power of telescopes used. If these ideas are right, then in the far future the universe will be a vast, empty, and lonely space.

This is Brian Green talking about the predictions of the inflationary theory on the future of the universe in The Fabric of the Cosmos (if you don’t know him, Brian Green is the charming guy who wrote the Elegant Universe and starred in the PBS series by the same name).

As a science fiction freak, reading the Fabric of Cosmos is a depressing experience. I really had high hopes for the universe. I believed one day we would travel all over the cosmos, meet other intelligent life forms, and expand our horizons. But scientists are discovering that we are really just a small group of living things in a universe that is too big and expanding too fast for us to go anywhere. And if you just wait 100 billion years more, we won’t even have a universe around us to enjoy.

The democratic dream of space travel for all, even in clunky starships a la StarWars is just not materializing. After we went to the moon a few times, manned space exploration went pretty much downhill. Sure, we have satellites junking up space, a international space station that is too hard to service, and we sent a bunch of probes to Mars. But space travel for humans is still too expensive and too dangerous.

Think about the Space Shuttle. Two years after the Columbia accident, the Discovery had first problems with the fuel sensors that delayed lift-off, then a piece of insulating foam hit the ship. Eileen Collins, US first female spacecraft commander, declared: “We were actually quite surprised to hear that we had some large pieces of debris fall off the external tank, it wasn’t what we had expected. Frankly, we were disappointed to hear that had happened.” So far, 4% of the people sent into space have been killed in accidents; NASA’s estimated rate of catastrophic failure for the Space Shuttle is two flights in 113, or 1 in 57.

We have not discovered how to speed faster than light into hyperspace or how to use the improbability drive. Sorry, folks, I think we are stuck on Earth. Let’s take good care of it.

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July 29, 2005 | Filed Under Earth & Universe | Comments Off 

More about IT:
Cheap, Fast, and Disposable

My “Leaving IT” post has received some attention; the trackback on Misbeaving.net was picked up by Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer and made it on Computerworld’s blog. Although I found quite interesting my obsession in reading my name quoted by others (think John Milton|Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate: “Vanity! definitely my favorite sin”), I would rather talk about what other bloggers have to say on the status of IT.

In Antigravitas, Jack William Bell talks about the conflict between his love for the intensity of IT work/satisfaction of “cranking up great code” and the realization that indeed something is wrong with the IT culture. But how is IT going to change if women are leaving?

If these are really the big issues for women, then I wish to all hell they would stay in IT. No matter how hard it gets. I wish they would stay, work their way into management, and change things for the better from the inside. Because we need them…

Too bad that sometimes women don’t get the chance to stay in IT and change the system from within. Dori Smith (Backup Brain) writes that the problem is not with women leaving IT, but rather with IT abandoning experienced and qualified programmers in favor of “cheap developers who are right out of college and willing to work 80+ hours a week.”

Shelley Powers (Burningbird) notes that it’s not the first time that women are first lured into the workforce and then sent home when they are not needed any longer. Shelley compares the contemporary attitude towards women in IT to the US Government propaganda during WWII in the strong and well-documented essay When we are needed.

When there is a need in the industry, women are welcome. When there isn’t a need, it’s Rosie the Riveter pack up your rivet gun and get out, all over again.

Some people pointed out that the culture of cheap and fast over good in corporate America goes well beyond IT. For example, Theodicius writes:

… that’s they way it is in almost every company, and the tendency increases with size. I used to work for a Fortune 500 company, not an IT company, and the attitude was prevalent all over the place. There wasn’t an emphasis on quality, despite the lip service. There was an emphasis on speed, and if quality was in the way, it quite often became a casualty.

And for some, this is not really a gender issue: the superhuman demands of the IT work hurt both women and men. And minorities are disappearing from IT even faster than women.

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July 21, 2005 | Filed Under Corporate Culture & Career | 3 Comments 

Blog Addiction

Addiction: “The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.” (from Dictionary.com)

I hope it’s just because of the novelty of blogging, but I am kind of obsessed with it. Ask my husband. So I thought that these t-shirts for sale at Blogher are very appropriate:

Blog WidowerSad but not uncommon condition

I wonder if they also offer support groups for bloggers and for their friends and family. I sure could use some help.

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Linking Posts

July 17, 2005 | Filed Under Blogging | 7 Comments 

The social life of geraniums

In Italy, geraniums are resilient plants that can live outside all year around. It turns out that it’s not the same in Pennsylvania. Last year, I left my geranium too long outside during the winter, and it almost completely died. After being inside for while, one of the three original plants slowly started making leaves again. That plant survived the winter, and when it was warm enough I put it outside.

The geranium really enjoyed being in the sun and made a lot of new leaves. Not a single flower, though. One day, I bought two new geranium plants from our local farmer’s market, and planted them on both sides of the old one. I joked with my husband that maybe the flowerless plant would learn by example that it was time to make new flowers. A few days later, I was out for my usual morning backyard inspection, and I looked at the geraniums. The plant that almost died last year and didn’t know how to make flowers, had a bunch of new flower buds.

GeraniumMaybe geraniums have a social life, too

Geranium

[Update] The First Symposium of Plant Neurobiology was held in Florence, Italy, last May. And you know what this means: Having a symposium of plant neurobiology is like admitting that plants have a brain. From the symposium’s website we can gather that plants are able to distinguish between self and no-self, have complex reactions to touch, and can remember. One entire section of the symposioum was dedicated to “Plant-to-Plant Communication and Ecophysiology.” In particular, it seems that plants send chemical signals to each other to communicate the presence of predators. The plants receiving the signal start chemical changes that will make them more resistant to injury and assault. (read more about plant neurobiology on the Christian Science Monitor)

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July 13, 2005 | Filed Under Social Behavior | 1 Comment 

The dangers of online candor

As all cops know, there is something exceptionally relieving in telling the truth. Lying takes a big effort; expressing who we are and how we really feel is the satisfying path of least resistance.

This is all good, but the impulse to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth creates some unique issues when it comes to blogging. The writer Ayelet Waldman describes on Salon the irresistible need to tell the whole truth on her blog:

Almost immediately I discovered in myself a confessional impulse, a compulsive need to haul open the tattered edges of my emotional raincoat and expose the nasty parts lurking beneath.

In a recent conversation with some friends, the issue of how much we can really afford to reveal in a blog came up. What price are we willing to pay to be naked in front of the world, especially if our blog is signed with our real first and last names?

Blogher, the upcoming San Francisco conference dedicated to women’s blogs, has devoted a panel on the issue of revealing yourself on your blog (How to be naked), which indicates just how important this issue is and how many people have already paid a price for their online disclosure.

Heather Armstrong, one of the BlogHer panelist, was fired in 2002 for writing about her work on her blog:

There is no such thing as unadulterated freedom of speech with a blog, not if you’re brave enough to tack on your real name to what you write.

There is a fine balance between free (and oh! so relieving) expression of ourselves and feeling comfortable when we realize that some people actually read our blog. Besides, nakedness is not always pretty to watch and total candor can be embarrassing (burping out loud is very liberating too, but who other than the burper enjoys it?).

Writing a blog is a balancing act. If the main motivation is self-expression and recognition (unless one earns money from one’s blog; I don’t), we should still be respectful of ourselves and the people we write about. And, if we really cannot resist telling the truth, what about one of those anonymous blogs?

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Linking Posts

July 13, 2005 | Filed Under Blogging | 6 Comments 

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