I got out for a bike ride yesterday, because the weather was perfect, but I forgot all about it. It was a ride to forget. I did 20 miles on some of the quietest country roads around here, and because we live in an age where everyone is angry or inattentive or both, I endured nine close passes for my troubles. One of the worst experiences I’ve had in a long time. No wonder I instantly filed the thing away.
Anyway, the foliage looked nice.
That’s the only reason I mentioned it here, that one semi-nice photograph. No other reason, other than I need to have a better ride, and soon. Just not today.
Today was spent on campus. Office hours, class prep, and then class. In my Digital Media Processes class we continued discussing Jenny Davis’ affordances. I made this image to illustrate a few of her examples.
And I’m going to drive this image of the actual affordances into everyone’s skulls. We’re going to be discussing this through much of the rest of the semester.
This will figure into the last project of the term, analyzing various social media platforms, in part using these verbs. One of our new mantras will become “We don’t want to ask does it afford, we ask HOW does it afford?” Right now I am busy trying to make all of this make sense for everyone.
I went to a lecture on campus this evening. It did not, at first, make any sense to me. But the presenter took us all on a journey of the 21st century in music and pop culture and technology.
The thing is, if you’re out of your area, nothing makes sense. I have a few areas, and so I was easily beyond my specialty here. The topic was how AI has impacted pop culture, and the approach was one that insured that nothing made sense to me. But! If you listen long enough someone that knows what they’re doing, like Dr. Robin James here, they can help get you there. After about 40 minutes, things in this talk started making sense. I found myself not shaking my head, but offering the universal sign, “Ahhh, yes, of course.”
This was all in service of getting a few photographs and a brief blurb for social media. Our department co-sponsored the event, we should brag on it. When I was putting the thing together in Instagram I discovered the word that will top the chart of Words We Hate for 2027.
I am ahead of the curve on that, as usual. Just wait, you’ll see.
Because it was getting late by then, because the days are shorter, I drove home in the darkness once again. I’m impressed I don’t miss more turns on the return trip. All of the empty fields look the same at night. (This did happen a few nights ago. I was chatting on the phone, drove straight when I should have turned right and wound up … over there somewhere. It wasn’t until the next day, staring at a map, that I realized my error.) But tonight, there were no such problems. Easy ride home. Dinner. Dishes. And before I came upstairs to get back to work, I saw this starry ceiling in the living room.
I bought that light a few years ago. Because I live in the 21st century, it is controlled by an app, which I hated. You can schedule it and change the scheme, though, which I loved. For a time, the light was unplugged, but recently it has resumed its role of amusing us on the ceiling in the evenings.
But I live in the 21st century, and of course the app is gone. The app has uninstalled itself — but not removed itself — from my phone (I’ve noticed this, of late, but have only just now looked into it. You fix this by going into Settings, then App Store, and scroll down to “Offload Unused Apps.” Also, the app is no longer on the App Store. Another developer absconding into the digital night. And so there is no control of the light. It will turn itself on and off thanks to the old programming. I can’t change the colors and patterns. But I can admire it! I can wonder if I should put the light in some other place. But I don’t really wonder whether I should buy another light that needs extras to operate. Because I live in the 21st century.
