Sigh.  My end-of-summer blues have kicked in full-force today.  They’ve arrived at a moment that no doubt seems premature, but really, everything’s rushing to a close.  R. is leaving Friday, ending a fabulous seven-month stretch together.  I hit the road on Friday, too, and with the exception of three brief days at home, will basically be on the road until August 23.  And that day’s my birthday, and my birthday traditionally marks the end of summer for real, and the start of the run-up to opening day.

This has been, without question, the best summer I’ve ever had.  It’s been both relaxing and productive, a combination I rarely manage to achieve.  And I’ve gotten to enjoy the payoff of years worth of old work, at long last.  I’m looking forward to the fall, to my classes, and to the other work I have ahead of me, but I’m really sorry to see this summer end, for more reasons than one.

I’m still running pretty much a day behind—meant to post this yesterday, but never got to it. In any event, and in a hurry:

The Chronicle reported yesterday that the ACLS had released a report, “Our Cultural Commonwealth,” examining the state of “cyberinfrastructure” in the humanities and social sciences, arguing—unsurprisingly, perhaps—that these “softer” areas of the academy have a long way to go in order to catch up with the levels of development and support available to the hard sciences. Among their recommendations is one near and dear to my heart: “Encourage digital scholarship.”

Today is also the final day in the summer institute on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at UC San Diego, sponsored by (among other organizations), HASTAC.

I’m very much hoping to hear what comes out of that institute, and looking forward to seeing how the ACLS’s report is received…

I’m a day late on this—finishing that draft and other emergencies got in my way—but I want nonetheless to direct your attention to MediaCommons 2: renewed publics, revised pedagogies, posted on if:book by my colleague and collaborator Avi Santo.  Avi makes a very compelling case for the kinds of instructional and outreach possibilities that a project like MediaCommons might have.  We’d love to hear your thoughts on these matters:  what kinds of pedagogical work would you like to see a scholarly network like MediaCommons do?  What roles might it serve in the wider public, beyond the academy?

A bouncing baby draft, and not a moment too soon.

I’ve got a long list of other tasks that need doing, a list that has had me feeling increasingly anxious over the last couple of weeks.  Perhaps I’m a little slow on the uptake, but it took the launch of Merlin Mann’s Back to GTD series to make me realize that some degree of that anxiety was being produced by the incompleteness of the list itself, by the fact that I’d remember in the middle of the night that I still need to buy a new filter for my air conditioner, and that the deadline for having my car smogged is creeping up without my having done anything about it.  So I’ve spent part of the last couple of days attempting to do something like a mind-sweep, getting everything that needs to be done down on my list.

And something about having that list in full, and consulting the list frequently at moments when I’m between tasks, has calmed me down and helped me figure out how I can accomplish something, even though I’ve only got twenty minutes to do so.  And somehow clearing all that stuff out of my head made space for me to finish a draft of that article, which was the most pressing, most looming task on the list.

Now revision.  And a long list of other stuff.

The article draft nears completion:  I’m at 32 pages, with about two pages to go.  And then a whole heckuva lot of editing and revision.  So lots of work to go, but oh, the bliss of knowing that there will shortly be an object with which I’m working…

…on the cover of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Not quite the same ring to it, alas. And it’s not like I’m there yet, thankfully, but I’m close.

Today’s cover story focuses on the Institute for the Future of the Book and Mackenzie Wark’s GAM3R 7H30RY, but if you read through, MediaCommons and I are there in the last quarter. (The Chron has made the article available to all readers—not just subscribers—right away, so go forth.)

As in degrees.

As in temperature, not heat index.

As in yesterday’s high here in Claremont.

They’re predicting 107 for today, but they’ve been consistently five or six degrees low on their predictions all summer.

*sigh*

(And now it’s pouring here, in the land of the no-rain-before-November.  Raining sideways.  Huge Louisiana thunderstorm style rain.  I’m beginning to think apocalyptic type thoughts.)

I’m now 28 pages into an article that I wanted to be around 25 pages long, and I’ve got at least another 5 pages of analysis and conclusion to write before the thing is complete.  Annoyingly, the first 20-ish pages of the article hold together pretty darn well—ideas move from one section to the next in what seems to be a fairly logical progression—and then in the last six pages (of what I’ve written, that is) it begins to crumble a bit.

I just want to be done with this article.  I’ve got two more things that I really have to get written before the end of August, and I can’t get going on them until this is done already.

End whinge.  Back to work.

Hey, this is cool:  the Amazon page for The Anxiety of Obsolescence now has “Search Inside” capability.  So now, in addition to the bits of text I put up over here, you can also search the rest of the text over there.

Ben Vershbow has posted a nice round-up of the reaction, over the last couple of days, to Monday’s MediaCommons announcement. There’s also a healthy comment thread on the original post over there. Needless to say, we’re gratified by the generally positive response, and we’re taking very much to heart the concerns that have been raised. Please do keep thinking about this, and as you have more feedback, we’d be very grateful to hear it.