The Paradox of Technology and Revising

I had my students read the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz this semester. The thesis is that too many choices makes people less happy, not more so (take that! Hegemony of consumer capitalism!). In the midst of revising my dissertation, I feel a similar paradox entangling me.

Lets call it the paradox of technology. The more technological options there are too facilitate writing and thinking, the more muddled the thinking becomes. Points to consider:

- I have a big Word file with the putative text of the dissertation (“the beast” or “the big, hairy, ugly beast” I call it).

- With Word, I can highlight and insert comments.

- I started a second file called revision plan where I put comments from the committee and my responses. It also had some random notes of mine about process. I started a big to do list as a table. Like this:

Task	Ideas
- Write Intro	- Read “classics” of brokers
- Summary overview of 4 companies	-Do more domain expert surveys.

Tabling lists has worked well for me with syllabi and other tasks.

- Meanwhile, as I read the beast (in some ways for the first time since I never really read through the beast from A to Z), I am putting little notes to myself in comments. Things like “Move this to intro.” Or “Check Billy Bob Jones 2003.” Or “These results need to be checked. Why include gender when its not significant?” On one hand, this helps me to get through a reading without getting distracted by every little thing I notice or think about. It reduces anxiety because I don’t sit there going “I Damn well better remember that!” On the other hand, it is comments crack- highly addictive and provides the illusion of comfort. Instead of actually revising, I just stick a comment in and the whole beast starts growing more heads than a hydra on steroids.

- I started to do a reverse outline of the beast in a now THIRD Word file. I dropped as I moved into the mind mapping \(see below).

- Word, Word everywhere: There are also older pre-writing and parallel writing files that live on the hard drive that cover topics like methodology, theory, my process, and research questions. There are also about thirty files of reading notes. I worry sometimes that good ideas, good text, or important connections are languishing amongst these, but I tend to avoid looking at them as it feel like a procrastination technique.

- Last winter, I stumbled across the use of mind maps (Example). I thought they looked cool because I tend to be a very visual thinker. I stopped myself from exploring too much as I smelled another procrastination trap. Now, in this revision, I let myself play with OpenMind for about 15minutes and the ability to visually map out levels and ideas seems to be working pretty well. As I read the beast, I am mapping the outline as it should be and making note of what is already in the beast and what needs to be added or moved. The mind map overlaps somewhat with the revision plan, the comments, and the reverse plan. I can imagine finishing the mapping, printing the map as an outline, and then using that outline as the template for the big time revising where I go through the beast and make all the pastes, cuts, and redrafts needed on the way to the final version.

- As I re-examine some of my analysis, I find myself needing or wanting to double check some quantitative results. This leads me to variably open network software (UCINET), or Stats software (Excel and SPSS). In some cases, is imply put a comment in saying “(check results.” In other cases, I run a new analysis and included the revised results. For example, in Chapter 2, I had written about included results that had non-significant variables and I pasted a different regression model with only significant results.

Three issues that emerge from this account:

1) I worry about overlap or inefficiencies in having basically three repositories of pre-writing or goals: the revision plan, the comments pegged to the beast, and the mind map. Also, switching between 3-10 word files, two stats programs, UCINET, citation software (RefWorks) and possibly some net visualization software ends up providng a world of side tracks, cul-de-sacs, loops, ambles, and long pauses in my writing/thinking. (Ask me about p-ness sometime :<))

Put another way- should I divide and conquer revising using separate files or should I stick to the beast and use the main Word file as the only revising “space” (in other words only work with that file and fix it as needed)?

2) Am I making life more difficult for myself by ignoring various files of pre- and parallel writing or by not opening and using those files?

3) Am I combing too many layers of revising? Should I simply read for concepts and re-organizing and then go back and fix tables, redo analyses and such? Or, is my multi-level revising better since it will allow me to look at actual analyses and see what results I have or need and have that feed into drafting or revising of theoretical and let review sections?

Preliminary Facebook Reaction

Well, having talked to a few people face2face an on-line, the general reaction is that using facebook data as source data for a student-directed research and writing project (where they would use their own egocentric network as the data) is a good idea.

Two sites recommended by Spencer Schaffner (of http://metaspencer.com) that look like promising starts are: Fred Stutzman's work on Facebook (http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/) and dana boyd's papers on Friendster (http://www.danah.org/papers/).

Other folks on SOCNET have made suggestions, and I am wading through those and will put here the most useful and provocative.

I registered with facebook with the intention of poking around and checking out its functionality. I did not see any obvious way to generate maps or export link data.

I was immediately faced with the conundrum of how to present. I initially said I was faculty, but gave myself a pseudonym. I was thinking that to assemble my own network it might be easier if I could “pass” as a student. Then I looked at my own profile and realized that anyone who could see my email would figure out I was posing. So, either I hide my email, revert to my real name (and give up the chance to pass as a student), or get a new .bucknell.edu email. The last seems very problematic.

I will be interested to see if students think I am being intrusive into “their” space. I had heard about vaguely horrified reactions from faculty or administrators about the level of debauchery or some other supposed social sin visible on facebook. I have not seen much at all. Lots of pictures of students drinking and socializing with friends or potential lovers (or sex partners). Nothing that shocks me. Maybe they have been cleaning up what’s there or it is more hidden content.

One faculty member was concerned that I would stumble upon or expose myself or students to issues of sexual violence (rape, date rape). She was not specific, but I gathered she meant that perpetrators might be tagged in their profile or that there may be fantasies or purported accounts of sexual acts or aggression. This may be the kind of content that was cleaned out by students once they realized that the veil between “us” and “them” could be so easily pierced.

Teaching Using Facebook

I am planning a new course to teach at Bucknell called "Six Degrees." I plan to do a mix of social networks and network science in other domains (like communictaion and transportation networks). The class is called a foundation seminar and it is limited to First Years and is meant to provide an introduction to college rigor.

Through media reports, I heard about facebook, my space, and the other "live" web sites and apps. (Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12015774/site/newsweek/)

It occured to me that maybe I could use my students' inetrest and involvement with this type of site as the basis for a series of assignments where they would collect data on their own network, anyalyse it with network software, and then do some analytical and creative writing assignments with their own analysis.

I am trying traditional and reaching out research to collect ideas. So far, this seems to be novel.

I am worried about two feasibility issues:
1) Can the students get network data in a sociomatrix for ease of analysis?
2) Will their networks be "interetsing"? I mean, will there be variation (cross-sectionally or longitudinally) in density, subgroups, roles, centrality (measured different ways)?

Clustering coefficient or Something else?

Snetthis to SOCNET. Posted here too.


I have been chewing on the idea that in a given intra-organizational network the process of knowledge creation is going to be enabled or constrained by the number of distinct, non-overlapping sub groups. Also, that rather than totally unconnected fragments, what is key is that these groups are connected by to each other.

One way to capture this idea, I thought, would be to look at the number of non-overlapping subgroups of strong relations in an advice-seeking relationship. But what is the mechanism of linking? Options include brokers in a different network of strong relationships, brokers in a different network of weak relationships, or brokers in the same network, but using weak relationships. So, if you are a subgroup with a broker, you are more connected (and more likely to spread your knowledge) than one without. A related question than becomes who "counts" as a broker? Is there some good cut-off value? Or maybe use the five individuals with the highest brokerage score?

So, three questions (and thank you paid forward)-

1) Is this similar to some work out there already?

2) Does the clustering coefficient already capture what I am describing as connected subgroups?

3) Does one of the options above sound better to you? (Advice subgroups with brokers in communication, Advice subgroups with brokers in weak communication, or advice subgroups with brokers in weak advice relations)?

Exploration and Exploitation

I am interested in a very pragmatic perspective on learning. Like Schulz (2001), I am interested in how emergent organizations confront problems. This leads to a “pragmatic” perspective one learning in which I assume “…that org knowledge arises through learning from experiences with problems. In that view, knowledge consists of assumptions about problems and their solutions.” (Schulz 2001: 662). A further distinction that deserves attention is whether this pragmatic learning is exploration or exploitation. While this distinction ahs been discussed and studied (see refs), we still need a better idea of how properties of certain organizations facilitate or frustrate exploration or exploitation.

Routines have long been a focus of OL literature and research. Routines are the supra-individual unit of analysis for OL. Routines are the schema, procedures, rules, and norms that are the basis for taking action. In terms of exploration and exploitation, routines for problem-solving may be exploratory or exploitative. For example when facing a new challenge, a routine that calls for brainstorming in small groups is more exploratory than assigning a solution to one person who is instructed to look at past experience with similar problems. The link between routines and exploration-exploitation is multi-faceted and mediated through the structure of an organization’s social network, especially its subgroup articulation (non overlapping groups linked to each other by brokers). Routines matter for exploration and exploitation in two ways. First, an organization may have certain routines for problem-solving that promote exploration or exploitation. More subgroup articulation will facilitate exploratory routines because the knowledge produced by those routines will be more likely to develop and compete for adoption. Conversely, less subgroup articulation because of its greater efficiencies in knowledge transfer and retention, will tend to frustrate a specifically exploratory routine for problem solving. An organization may try to be more innovative or radical in its solutions (emerging from policy or organizational culture), but the effect of less sub group articulation will be to limit the creation and viability of that exploratory potential. Second, the amount of variation in problem solving routines will increase the amount of knowledge potential for the organization and hence exploration. This is a more indirect effect on exploration. However, it is also mediated by the relational property for subgroup articulation. More subgroups will tend to develop and nurture a greater variety of problem solving routines just as they foster and nurture a greater variety of ideas for solving problems.

The number of groups is very important to pursuing exploration because even specific individuals or routines that are focused on risk, innovation, creating new knowledge, or radical changes will see their efforts evaporate as the exploitative tendency of the denser network effectively (if unintentionally) limits the amount of requisite and viable possibilities. Hence, exploratory drive will suffocate under the weight of exploitation’s density and larger subgroups.

Two features of the interaction between networks and learning can influence exploratory or exploitative learning. One has to do with the creation of knowledge while the other has to do with the transfer of knowledge. To be more exploratory, an organization must have more ideas, more knowledge potential. More distinct subgroups will have more knowledge due to the insulating effect on knowledge and creativity of distinct subgroups. This first factor is requisite diversity of knowledge in the idea or knowledge stock available to guide company action. Higher requisite diversity leads to more exploration. The second has to do with knowledge transfer; specifically, whether the multiple relations of an organization’s social network are highly coupled or loosely coupled. Highly coupled relations will lead to more exploitation as knowledge has more conduits to spread and as actors will accord more legitimacy to knowledge that comes form a friend, work colleague, and trusted advisor than knowledge coming across only one of those relationships. Loosely coupled relations allow for the productive misfit of social networks.

The World Cup and my Dissertation

12/11/2005

Inspiration from Bruce Arena (US Men’s Coach) on drawing Italy, Czechs, and Ghana for World Cup in 2006. “it is what it is.” Indeedy.

For better or for worse, the black thoughts that plague me should just be left behind.

There is a certain troubled relationship with expertise I have. I seem to berate myself for not being more of an “expert.” Meanwhile, I jump from interest to interest so that my expertise doesn’t seem to accumulate that much in any one thing. But maybe my sense of expertise is off-target. Like, I think if I have to think about something, or do some reading, then I am not an expert. If the answer Is not on the tip of my tongue, then I am not an expert.

But maybe this is where I need a massive dose of “get over myself.” The very act of revisiting my own experience and knowledge, my own writings and musings, is what builds my expertise. It is not the internalization of all possible knowledge that makes me an expert. It is the ability to perform in a given context that makes me an expert, which is, of course, always a relative reference anyway. I am an expert compared to someone else.

So, having 60+pages of pre writing and free writing is a resource for being an expert, not evidence for the eternal prosecutor to use to make the case that I am a fraud. Having my e-journal spread over12 files with file names that are hash of indexing is not one more datum in the great “jordi-is-not-an-expert” database. They are what they are- the sinews and stitches of my thinking and doing.

Too much of the former, not enough of the later.

Hence, next post on the exploration and exploitation.

Here we go

This may be a very bad idea. I am finishing a dissertation in management. I spend a lot of time journaling and pre-writing. Getting ideas down on screen so that I can build momentum and see how a thought looks once made concrete. Over tow years, this has accumulate into quite an amount of detritus of ideas, possibilities, and mental prospecting.

I have slowly learned that this actually may help me finish (I can be a slow learner).

I have not a lot of contact with my dissertation committee for many valid reasons that don’t need enumerating here.

Over time, I have assembled a loose collection of friends and contacts who have advised me about one aspect or another about this project.

As a peripheral observer and consumer of distributed information, web-based discourse, email-based discussions of a community of interest, and all the other fauna of the web-ecology, I have gained an appreciation for how this infoscape can facilitate writing and thinking.

So, I will try this weblog about my dissertation.

Some ground expectations…

I anticipate a small readership.

If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to add them.

I will avoid much of the personal ranting and neurosis dwelling that populates other pre-writing and journaling I have done.

The best way to start writing is to…start writing. Corollary: the best way to get out of a hole you have dug for yourself is to stop digging.

If you are a researcher or writer and you happen to like what you read here, cite away, but give credit too.

Here goes…