Things have happened since then, and I am very happy with the technology, to the degree that it takes up large amount of my time, contains my work, and hope for a job in the inner, deeper levels of information and data handling and meaning.

(Mount Bromo, Java, Indonesia)

Today, we travel as flashpackers. Last time in Australia, in 2005, I remember it annoyed me that I had piles of cables, electronics, discs and data in my backpack. I am getting used to it. A couple of years back, I went to Damascus, and my professor wanted me to go to the souq, find a carpet-seller, and show him the (uploaded) photo he took of him a few years before. I stared at the prof in disbelief: did he think I would bring my widescreen macbook along on my holiday!?

Anyway. I remembered back to my jaunt through South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand back way yonder. Not able to read the papers or understand the news on telly, I only got glimpses of what went on in the world when I came to a large city and could buy a Newsweek. If I bothered. Or found a crumpled copy in some dusty mountain village in Sumatra. Grand and gruesome happenings in the world passed me by.

I dawdled, wandered, splashed, spluttered, lollygagged and pottered around, unaware of riots in Europe, unaware of riots down the road. I had several poste restante, and got news from Indonesia via my family. Four weeks later.

So now, we pack the internet. And in so doing, we pack our history, connections, friends and habits. And habits is the clue here. I was, back then, cut off. And in being cut off, I was forced to take part in what went on around me. At times it was tiring, at times the cultures and the demands on me was more than I liked, as a female Scandinavian travelling alone. I imagine that if I had internet back then, my 21 year-old self would be online whingeing about the locals, the annoying invasion of my personal space, the incomprehensible customs and reactions.
As it were, there was no Net, and slowly I learned to understand why things happened, learned to avoid it, live with it or enjoy it.

This is dangerous ground for me: I do not want to glorify the “good old days”. On the other hand, you could say that if I had had internet, I would have been able to connect with locals before I left; I could have googled incomprehensible cultural differences. I would have learned from that, with my fact-hungry, analytical left brain.

At one point, I became, relatively, “an old hand”. I saw people fresh of their planes, who blundered into and stamped over local customs and sensibilities. It made me cringe. Sometimes I could not explain why, other than “you don’t do that”. Right-brain stuff.

There are loss-and-gain, obviously. But the feeling of isolation; of being basically cut off (and yet part of a society) for months.. I wouldn’t mind that again. But it is not possible.

You cannot step twice into the same river.

-b

(selling goodies, Bukittingi, Sumatra, Indonesia)

(the images are all scans from my slides from back then)

At the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., they have a programme that’s been going on for a number of years; The Human Origins Program. This is to bring evolution and research out there, mainly via the exhibition Hall of Human Origins. In the US, this is considered politics. I venture to say that in Europe this is considered history. So as the americans need to do sensible research, they also to a certain extent need to step carefully. Interesting, bizarre and a wee bit disturbing to me; this tip-toeing.

Scientists argue. Scientists have specialities, and some are extremely specialised in very detailed, at times small and obscure fields. Sometimes they want to share, sometimes not. Sometimes they dislike other scientists definitions, sometimes the overlap of fields can be enriching or frustrating. They work on projects, and they create the tools they need. It seems that they, for all sorts of reasons, creates their own databases; gather their data and information in forms that suits them best there and then. Not necessarily very sustainable, but if you don’t want to share your findings, well, I suppose you could have it inscribed on scrolls under your bed.

Anyway. Working on The Human Origins Program team is Dr. Matthew Tocheri, a paleoanthropologist specialising in the evolution of the hand and foot. Part of his job is to gather data in a cross-field database. This covers several specialist fields, including paleoanthropology, archeology, vertebrae zoology, geochronology, paleoecology, paleoenvironment and of course geology. He collects data wherever he can find it, from old publications, from fellow researchers. Apparently, it has not been attempted to collect data from these related fields together in this manner before. Matthew collects, and created a database that will accept different definitions, different names and different approaches. This is an exercise in flexibility, and therefore; sustainability.
Understanding that no data is also information.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. – Einstein –

So. In the middle of this, we landed. Two computer engineering students, and one student of digital media. What could we do, and how on earth could we handle those specialist fields?!

The idea was to make a website, that would make it possible to handle these data, show relations and scope quicky and intuitively.

We drew, scribbled, and tried to get our heads around Matthews database. This is complex data with, at times, complex relations. What a field day, for a digital media student! Deep time, deep space…

This is the prototype, as it stands at the end of the project. Google maps, five timelines, and a field for data. It seems simple; it seems obvious, but the road was hard. I like to believe that to make something complex seem effortless is an art; and is the litmus test of a system like this. If you can think “of course, that is how it must be done, it is obvious” – it is the colombus’ egg. It is art, it is magic.
In reality; lots of work.

It is not easy. But it is simple. – House –

We had amazing days in Washington D.C., working with Matthew and the others in the Human Origins Program. (plenty of pictures here) It was relief, and an extreme privilege to work with solid data and talented, smart and dedicated people. The wonderful, beautiful feeling of working with real, sensible content, and not trying to sell sand in Sahara; creating designs and frameworks without content. It was mad, fab and hard work. We spend about six weeks all in all in D.C., and with the exception of one day and a hospitalisation, we worked at the museum every day. Not much sightseeing, not much fresh air. Back in Norway, we did pretty much the same…

There is a million small things to consider, building something like this. Personally, I am primarily interested in the overall structure, the architecture, the interface and the graphic design. To display scope is very important: if you’re looking for information, and you know nothing of the source, it must pretty easily show you that it might contain what you’re looking for or not. This is – as of yet – a site for students and scientists of the fields, and I think I can assume that they have a little more than a two-second attention-span. Still. Scope is absolutely essential.

This is in many ways infographics. I do obsess, though, over tiny, tiny details. The amazing privilege of being allowed to do both: play with ideas, overall structures, grand plans and gestures, and at the same time dig into tiny pixels.

An example of the detail-obsession, would be the angled text above the timeline icons. I really, really wanted them angled, and the amount of hassle and fiddling to make them, place them, and allow them to be clickable and roll-overs was unreal. Of course, as we kept inventing uses for them, I had to adjust, but it is just one example of obsessive fiddling that would easily have drowned in another project…

..and that brings me to the boys. Lars and Audun handled the programming and database part, while I obsessed with html, css, graphics, interface and structures. Bless them. Not only was it an enormous privilege to work with the anthropologists, but my team was the best. Of course they were, I hand-picked them myself ;-)

Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process. – M. C. Escher –

That I could fiddle, learn, dig and struggle with things I like, and at the same time important progress was made in other parts, was wonderful. I suspect the boys feel the same. We became a tightly knit team, and we had to talk through definitions and find a common language. We shared the dedication for the project, and nearly worked ourselves into collapse. It was hard, we all had to learn new things ourselves, we all banged fists on the table in frustration at times, but I’d do it all over again. There was plenty of compromises. And plenty of laughs. Ah, the giggles… I will miss that.

But out of the other end, came a prototype we are proud of, that others like and admire, that several people might be interested in, and I believe Matthew is happy with. We got top grades on the project, that I for one feel was the only option. It was not by far the most important thing, but feels good anyway, and the good people at the museum expected nothing less.

At the time of writing, the prototype is hosted on our servers, and only contains some of the data from the database. We hope, though, that it will go live from Smithsonian before x-mas. I am hoping they will continue to develop it; I hope we have been part of pointing out a direction.

Now, as I have finished my bachelor, new adventures beckons. If all goes well, there might be another project for the museum. I keep my fingers crossed, and take a few weeks well deserved holiday. It is summer, and I still have that indoor skin colour that I always thought was the trademark of geeks only…

And so three years ended. Higher education. Just as I got good at playing the game, it is over. It was a mixed kettle; these three years. Most of the courses seemed exciting on paper, and a good handful of them turned out to be dreadful. Pointless. Insulting. Yes, digital media production is a new-ish branch, and my university college a small one, but dmPro is clearly the stepchild of the IT department. A good deal of the lecturers there would rather not have us meddling in their pure, proper information technology. The sign of small minds.

I have learned though. Mainly because I wanted to. It seems, you could get through a bachelor without learning much; without much ability. The system is made to get as many as possible through, degrading the meaning of a bachelor, and offending the ones who actually work their asses off. At the end of the day, it is a yes or no question whether you have a degree, not always the grades, attitude or accomplishments. We are considered sheep; bachelor students.

They say the world becomes beautiful and exciting at master level. I will find out, in about a year.

I realise the system is not made for me, though. I am fifteen years too old. Of course, there are kids that are way smarter than me, but I have experience in spotting gobshait. I suspect some lecturers get used to having 18-20 years olds that tend to accept whatever bullshit they say. Not so easy, then, with that old hag in the front row being difficult.

I’ve had fun too. The last year was hard, hard work, close to breaking point. But I found a small handful of good people, and you can do anything, if you have good people. Talent, hard work and nonsense is essential.

Pictures from those years  here

So now I am unemployed, soon to be homeless, and the world of wonderful uncertainties unfold. New adventures.

Best of all. I can get out of this place.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Go oooon – guess!

Media science was the last exam, and I find it enormously interesting (I shall not make any prophesies or guesses there, I refuse to think about those frantically scribbled pages during four hours of coffee-and-red-bull-induced hyperactivity). The good thing about media science, is that I can disagree. There are methods, a tad of research, some statistics, a smattering of history, a smidgen of social science, a piece of psychology, a pile of popular culture and a pail of common sense. A delightful breakfast kedgeree, endless discussions and sink-teeth-into material.

In media science, they talk about TV and media as a means of flight.
The theory says that the industrial revolution gave us spare time, mind numbing routines and a fragmented life separated from seasons and rhythm. So a need for diversion. TV as a place to disappear into; another world, to vegetate and receive, with no means or need to respond or act. To either rest the mind from real life, or empty ones head: meditation, in a way, a forgetting of self. A flight into fiction, adventure, the mundane, the fantastic, the trivial: as long as it is not your own life. So here we are, the cream of evolution; with hundred channels and nothing on.
Fair enough.

But here is my thougths: I think the fragmented meaninglessness of the news and media in general (read: gossip) generates this need to “go somewhere else”, somewhere simpler, where rules are followed, good guys good, bad guys detectable. It seems to me to be self-generating. The shorter, more dramatic and contextless the news become, the stronger the need for a simple world somewhere. We cannot truly process the information.

As a virtual friend quoted: Be careful who you listen to, because their voices will influence your own.

I knew people who lived through, spoke like, and was more engaged in Coronation street than what was around them (what was around them was admittedly dismal, but so is Coronation street..). And I know a guy, and he is as smart as they come, who says that he stopped reading books because he’d rather live life than read about it. But his TVconsuption is up there among the best.

We choose the flightpattern. Mine at the moment is going south.