iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 03/02/2025

I think you should still look pain in the eye, as Brene Brown would say, but the task of looking above it is just as crucial.

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 03/02/2025

Particularly when your topic has been epistemically approached—at least as I can recall—through a language of deficits, pains, and inequities.

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 03/02/2025

Writing an ethnography is a time-intensive practice in shedding your biases about whatever phenomenon you're observing. Holy crap, y'all. Easier said than done.

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 01/02/2025

This is what should swell our feeds: evidence of the "resistance" ethic. And it's everywhere—California, Detroit, and maybe even your home.

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 01/02/2025

This quaint, unassuming tile was made by one Bruce Weiner of Pennsylvania, who appears to sell only Ben Franklin-themed art. Niche market, niche buyer. Just look at it. It brings me interminable joy. ❤️

A quaint little tile proudly standing on a desk lamp reads a quote from one of the greats: "Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade! BEN FRANKLIN 1750"

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 31/01/2025

Like, I study information, dude. And when I mean information, I mean localized knowledge like gossip and hearsay. "Chisme," as my fellow Spanish speakers know.

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 31/01/2025

There's nothing like being assigned to a dissertation writing group where one of your peers is an upper atmospheric and space sciences scholar to make you feel you're out of their league. It's humbling, I recommend it! 😂

Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Reposted by Sylvia Darling

I appreciate all the people recommending the Shock Doctrine. I've been thinking about what makes Trump's use of these tactics a little different. In recent decades, shock tactics were used mainly to rapidly impose neoliberal economic policies. But what Trump is doing goes way beyond that. a 🧵

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On the other hand, I'm thrilled to learn that having high levels of trust can mean being better able to navigate the unknown. For my sake and for research purposes. I'd never thought of this in such terms but it makes sense! Such a great interview: pod.link/1554567118/e...

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If I'm not an expert in these fields, then seeing a bunch of code or numbers won't make me feel better or equipped to find the solution—not on their own. Which is why context is everything. And yes, integrity. And yes, reliability. Transparency is part of the equation, I guess, but it's not all.

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I was listening to Adam Grant's recent interview with Rachel Botsman about this, and I see how it can apply to so many things: predictive algorithms, childcare & school monitoring, government spending, and even relationships.

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Anja Neundorf @anjaneundorf.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I've been thinking a lot about the premium we as a society place on transparency, how it suggests how distrustful we are when we ask for it of institutions, and how it doesn't really fix that problem because it can't guarantee that we'll understand what's behind the veil.

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Reposted by Sylvia Darling

1/ Autocrats combine tools to stay in power, but most research looks at them in isolation. We map 6 strategies—repression of rights & physical integrity, co-optation through institutions & resource distribution, and indoctrination via education & media—for a full picture.

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Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 24/01/2025

Good question, and technically the first from a committee member. 😉 That "informational" process has a name, which I'll share and discuss at your lab! Please hit me with more questions!

Sylvia Darling @sylviadarli.ng · 24/01/2025

... It's a breakthrough. It's the satisfaction they gain from realizing their process of leveraging information has produced some gain — circumstantial, intrinsic, etc. — they couldn't have achieved otherwise. Especially while living under seemingly unrectifiable structural inequality.

But, he continues, once they decide what they want to do, they're likely to be very successful in achieving it. The framework still applies. So, for all my wanting to create a theory of social change premised on hope, I should, y'know, have faith.

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Which is why I'm hesitant to say the process helps them thrive. I'm stumped about this last person. I tell my advisor this. He tells me, it's true they are at a crossroads. They have an internal conflict—their public and private desires are at odds.

Three peeps with different aspirations, different problems, and living at different junctures of their lives. Leveraging information gets them closer to where they want to be. One actually got there, one is practically there, but the other is not quite.

I'm basing it on the two years I spent in Honduras doing ethnographic fieldwork and hanging out with three soberingly extraordinary people who engaged in this process I'm trying to define as if I were panning for gold.

Bear with me: In my dissertation, I want to introduce a conceptual framework that describes how some folks — living in very crappy, unfair conditions — leverage information to thrive. By information, I mean institutional knowledge & gossip, eavesdropping, transient observations... the good stuff.

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These are precarious times — sad and maddening, too — but they also call toward a watershed of renewed hope, the type that Vaclav Havel sees as an "orientation of the spirit." And, I really try to hold onto that.

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Precarity can be uncomfortable, but some studies on neuroplasticity show that discomfort sits at the edge of better cognitive functions. So, I hold onto that.

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I like the "yes, and" kind of mindset. Precarity is a word that's been choked to death in my academic tower — so vague, so unwilling to clarify whether it's a good or bad thing, although many edge toward the latter — but today, I'm OK with it.

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Source: Guberek, T., McDonald, A., Simioni, S., Mhaidli, A. H., Toyama, K., & Schaub, F. (2018, April). Keeping a low profile? Technology, risk and privacy among undocumented immigrants. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-15).

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You know, it's a hopeful time. What an opportunity to manifest the energies of "if-you-build-it-they-will-come."

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What will the move to decentralized, friendlier platforms look like? Will it be big and sudden, acting on the political watershed of this moment? And/or will it be driven by an alternative that offers all the good of Facebook: community-tailored tools, multilingual support, etc.?

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My team's advice at the time was to choose communication platforms that prioritized encryption but were familiar enough that friends and families would readily adopt. Tricky, when what's familiar — Meta products — isn't the most secure. So, what does it take?

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