On Wed. morning I went to a great session titled “Knowledge Flow in 'Real' and 'Virtual' Spaces.”

Patricia Lange (San Jose State U.) led off talking about her analysis of 'tech talk' in online chats. She argued, in a nutshell, that debaters and 'flamers' often resort to morality as the basis for critiques in the great Linux/Windows debate. Her talk was an interesting mix of social-rhetorical analysis and ethnomethodology. Later on, Patricia and I talked a bit about whether the tense of statements in a chat room has any influence on the arguments, whether it's intentional, etc. What I mean is, in most chats you can either type something directly, in which case the text appears as “: ” or you can give a command that makes a statement in the 3rd person, as in “ thinks the Linux/PC debate is pointless.” These two different forms might say something about the speakers' strategy for conveying power or authority through online chats. Anyway, a point for further discussion.

Roxana Wales also gave a nice talk on her work at NASA with the Mars rover missions. She's just recently moved to Google, not to work on a product, but to study work practice and growing pains at Google itself. Very cool stuff, and I can't wait to hear more about it.

Elizabeth Churchill also gave a great paper in which she described her work with an interactive community bulletin board in a café space. I really loved her discussion, partly because it was well framed, and partly because it meshes really well with recent thinking I have been doing on the power of soundscapes as a shared 'canvas' for communication, collaboration, and creativity. Although Elizabeth's story ended sadly (the touch-screen bulletin board broke and no one paid to fix it) I think it's way ahead of its time. One question, largely unresolved, is how people will respond to the presence of new and potentially foreign interaction artifacts in their space. Which technological frames will they use to understand them? Are the ads? Are they like physical bulletin boards? Like computers or laptops? Fascinating questions.

Perhaps the best part of this session, which attracted a small but vocal and diverse group of people, was the discussion. We had a good 30 minutes of chatting about a variety of issues. This is why I love the SfAAs – they bring together a generous and curious group of folks who just want to share ideas. I hope there continue to be more IT-related folks at the meetings. Brigitte Jordan has been a fixture for the last few years, and I have really enjoyed her contributions, beginning with a roundtable on corporate anthropology at the 2004 meetings in Dallas.

More later…

Intel eyes PCs for developing nations (via news.com)
By Candace Lombardi
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: March 30, 2006, 12:32 PM PST
Last modified: March 30, 2006, 9:00 PM PST

The fully featured, high-quality, low-cost desktop PC platform is aimed at first-time computer users and the design is meant to be carried out by PC makers. The platform was unveiled by Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini at a press event in Mexico as part of Intel's "Discover the PC" effort.

While Intel has not yet released details, the platform is promised to be small, inexpensive, energy-efficient and reasonably priced for the average developing-nation family, according to a statement.

The desktop PCs will also have high-speed Internet access….

Most consumer PCs are not designed to withstand unusually adverse climate conditions or handle fluctuating power supplies, and that has severely limited their use in parts of some developing countries.

On Wednesday, Intel unveiled in India a fully functional computer called the Community PC. It's well-equipped to handle adverse conditions, according to Intel spokeswoman Agnes Kwan.

Intel's Community PC is designed to withstand temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit and up to 85 percent relative humidity, and has a removable dust filter. To keep the motherboard cool, the chassis houses an integrated fan. The computer operates on a "customized power supply unit," and is designed to consume less than 100 watts while operating, which is another way of keeping the computer's heat in check.

Intel seems to continue to understand 'appropriate' as a function of the technology alone. Their new 'Community PC' is designed to withstand adverse operating conditions (good), and to be situated in a kiosk (good) as a shared-access machine (depends on the use). We know that Intel is counting on kiosk owners being about to pay more for (presumably with borrow money) the desktop and so it'll cost more. That's okay, according to them, because it's a source of income. But how? What are people going to do with them? Computers don't attract users like mosquitos to a light. There is little that is inherently appealing.

The end of this article mentions several Intel pilot projects that have proven to them that this is the way to go. Anyone know which pilots? Are they still around? Simple probability says they're not.

Update: Today I noticed an article on Wired News about Negroponte's reaction to Intel and Microsoft criticising the $100 laptop/One Laptop Per Child project. No surprise – the article is entirely about technology. Oddly, the article finishes with a quote from Negroponte: "The hundred-dollar laptop is an education project. It's not a laptop project." And yet – where's the talk about education? Seriously. If it's out there, please point me to it.

So, Tamar and I just got back from this year's Society for Applied Anthropology conference in Vancouver. I meant to write some posts while we were there, but I realized that I'd much rather spend my time actually going to the conference and hanging out with old (and new) friends than blogging.

Before we ever got to the conference, my first time to Canada started with a bang owing to the Dufferin Hotel. Two stars my ass. And a word to the wise: if the hotel doesn't put any pictures of itself online, be worried. Very worried. Boy was I mad when I called Priceline. Smelly, dark, dirty, old, mostly broken, under construction, no deadbolt on the door. We lasted 20 minutes. Thankfully we got our money back, but because Vancouver was so full of anthropologists (or whatever) most of the hotels were full. So we ended up in the only slightly more upscale Boseman's Motor Lodge. But at least it was clean and safe. Actually, over the course of the week we learned to appreciate the old Boseman.

But, to the conference. In a nutshell: this year's SfAA was, as usual, a wonderful gathering of diverse people. The two best things about SfAA are that you can never guess which talks will turn out to be interesting and relevant, and the feeling of the meeting is so casual and collaborative. Even though many of the talks themselves can be tedious, usually owing not to the idea content but the presentation style, the discussions are always great.

And, of course, Vancouver is a beautiful city with lots of good food and drink. The weather was actually quite nice – better than expected.

Anyway, I have a few more comments on specific sessions and stuff, and I'll make them in order – just a few days delayed from real time.