My Summer Vacation. And, Nerd Alert.

I honestly thought I’d keep up with this thing over the summer–I mean, I was basically on the laptop much of the time. It’s funny how writing for others can seem like such a chore, when typing up notes and annotations is taking up most of my time. This was my summer of reading for, and then taking, my PhD qualifying exams. It works basically in two parts. The first part is mainly based in fear: my four committee members sign off on four reading lists in four different categories, each list with a combination of about 30 books/articles/chapters-from-books. I frantically read and re-read and skimmed everything, because I have no idea what my committee members will ask me questions about three months later. That’s the second part: I wrote about 10-15 pages on each of four broad questions dealing with those lists. That was my last two weeks. From May until two weeks ago, all I did was read. And underline. And margin-note. And annotate. For the last two weeks, I had to shrink all that down to 60 pages, give or take. And they wouldn’t even let me join a club where I submit a book report to earn a personal pan pizza.

I also watched the entirety of The Wire and Arrested Development for the second time each, and I’m just starting season 2 of Mad Men (thoughts to come). You’d be amazed at how much you want to watch television after reading for 8 hours a day. Okay, 7.

Just for fun, here’s sociologist Howard Becker’s legendary exegesis on doobage-puffing, “Becoming A Marihuana User” (1953).

Like driving somewhere, getting there, and instantly not remembering anything about the drive, at some point during the summer, I wrote an essay called “The Social History of the mp3,” which went up today. It’s the first of a series long-form things as part of Pitchfork’s two-month long sayanora to ye olde Aughts, which commenced with the singles countdown (to which I contributed words on “Shakey Dog” and “Your Cover’s Blown” here, “Lloyd, I’m Ready” here, “Nothing Ever Happened” here, and “Ready for the Floor” here).

The “social history” thing, yes. I sincerely hope it comes across well, and clearly. I’m making some pretty sweeping claims, some bugged-out comparisons, and some open-hearted pleas in there. I hope the tl;dr-ness doesn’t stop you from sitting with it for about a half-hour (my estimate), and maybe leaving some helpful hints in the comments, if you’re so inclined. Believe it or not, there was a ton of stuff I wanted to put in there, but cut for length, or just because I was told that it was in fact not something that anyone would want to read of their own volition.

On that note, thanks to Scott P. and Mark R. for editing the crap out of that thing, challenging some of the stranger points I was making, and generally performing an academectomy on the whole thing.

Because I still have this thing, and I feel I should do something bloggish with my weird summer, her’s a list of the best stuff I read–they’re all “academic,” but they’re “good academic” because they’re books you’d actually enjoy reading. Maybe. The ones with asterisks were really important to sparking my imagination for the Pitchfork essay. I’ll post again in a while about the future of this site and stuff. Until then, in alphabetical order, (nerd alert):

Mark Andrejevic “iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era“
Ien Ang “Desperately Seeking the Audience“
*Arjun Appadurai “The Social Life of Things“
Robert Armstrong “Powers of Presence: Consciousness, Myth and Affecting Presence“
Roland Barthes “Image Music Text“
*Yochai Benkler “The Wealth of Networks“
James Boyle “The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind” (or: free as a pdf)
*James Carey “Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society“
Rosemary Coombe “The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties“
Tarleton Gillespie “Wired Shut: Copyright & the Shape of Digital Culture“
Matt Hills “Fan Cultures“
*Henry Jenkins “Convergence Culture“
Brian Larkin “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy” (pdf)
*Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture” (pdf)
Jessica Litman “Digital Copyright“
*Carolyn Marvin “When Old Technologies Were New“
Richard Peterson “Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity“
Mark Rose “Authors & Owners: The Invention of Copyright“
*Nicholas Sammond “Babes in Tomorrowland“
Susan Lee Star “The Ethnography of Infrastructure” (pdf)
Jonathan Sterne “The Audible Past“
Fred Turner “From Counterculture to Cyberculture“
Michael Warner “Publics and Counterpublics“
Eva Hemmungs Wirten “No Trespassing“