My current thinking on my thesis topic still circles around this idea of the hybrid. Its enjoying popularity right now in reference to cars and science fiction plots, but if you look it up in the OED, find something quite generic:

Anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of different or incongruous elements; in Philol. a composite word formed of elements belonging to different languages

The offspring of two animals or plants of different species, or (less strictly) varieties; a half-breed, cross-breed, or mongrel.

In our first meeting of the Official Thesis Class, we took turns giving the group updates on where our thinking had wandered to while away on summer vacation.

At the end of last year I was using the working theme of "spanning the divide between the digital and physical worlds." Dubious grammar aside, I still feel like these two ideas of our digital and physical lives are still interesting and engaging themes to be working with. But I have begun to step away from some of the ways that I was relating them in my earlier writing.

I wonder about the idea of spanning these two. Do I want to span them? Iterate between them? Use the idea of a hybrid so that projects exist in multiple categories? I have started to look into some of my summer reading for new ways of thinking about how digital and physical could/should/have/will relate to one another.

In class the discussion about my thesis got fun and sort of animated. As usual, people's initial assumptions of what I mean when I say "technology" are widely varied. A typical response at RISD to to assume that technology means Flash or interactive media, and that the internet means the commercial internet or ecommerce. Its useful for me to keep in mind that unless I get more specific, my critics and viewers are going to keep making this association and its going to affect the discussion going forth.

Also in class we got into the question of our involvement and connection to online social media, and whether or not the connection we feel is real or perceived. There's a common assumption that the younger techie generation has adopted these new technologies without any sort of preliminary questioning, and the argument was raised that our generation is more obligated than ever to put those questions out there.

I kicked off my first day of school -- the last of my academic career, most likely -- with a rousing meeting of Thesis I. It felt like show and tell, where we all talked about what we did over the summer, and shared how our thesis ideas had shifted in that time.


I also spent several days leading up to the start of school getting settled into my new desk, and organizing the ever-growing pile of junk that I tend to have around me at all times. I don't have a reliable digital camera lined up for this year, so pardon the Photo Booth graininess for the time being. :)