Scott sent me an article about identity online from the Baltimore Sun where we’re both quoted – Scott from a half-hour conversation with the journalist (I assume many of the ideas in the piece came from this) and me from an academic paper I wrote. That’s a first, a journalist quoting an article I’ve written – I love it! They even give me an interesting new identity of “Swiss academic”! I wonder what I’d be like if I were? Anyway, this reminds me of the article Marika mentioned the other day, JosÈ van Dijck’s article ‘From shoebox to performative agent: the computer as personal memory machine’ (New media and society 7 (3)). My research fortnight starts tomorrow. No teaching! not in the office! When in the office, my phone now rings on average three times an hour and someone knocks on my door twice an hour. Probably this is partly due to the start of semester, which means lots of students with questions, but a lot of it is general administration stuff too. I like people and this is clearly part of my job but it’s not condusive to focussed work of any sort, least of all research – and that’s part of my job too… Anyway, I’m going to read a lot. Here’s what I’ll be reading:

• The aforementioned article by JosÈ¥van Dijck.
• N. Katherine Hayles: My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts
• Mark Hansen: New Philosophy for New Media (not sure yet how relevant this will be so I’ll see how much of it I read
• Gunther Kress & Theo van Leeuwen: Multimodal Discourse (because it’s about time, though I think I already know the content I’d better be sure, I mean, even Anders’s students are reading it)
• Some online e-lit and such. Haven’t selected it yet.
• Should I figure out what that post-theory stuff is, or is it already out of date?

I feel like I haven’t just read in years. Can’t wait.