FergusonCommentMemo1-Denver

Denver, the idealist/cynic dyad is a strange juxtiposition. Does this mean that you are usually working or thinking about some ideal scenario but know full well that you can't reach it?
 * __FergusonComment1&2-Denver__**

Your last habit indicates that you produce a number of ideas, most of which are forgotten. Do you find this problematic? Do you get the feeling that your work might be better if you fought back against this habit through memoing, note taking, or some other prosthetic for your memory?

I'm like you in regards to the solitary focus on the task in front of me. Actually, my multitasking skills generally are terrible, and I have to compensate accordingly.

Alright, “lack interest in reality”?...is this because you like thinking about digital environments or you simply don't care about the repercussions of introducing theory and conjecture into the world? How do you manage this neuroses as you work on the case studies, interviews, and other data sets for your projects? Is this a limitation to you or simply a neutral characteristic?

I've been having this quality of work issue running through my head since I arrived at RPI. I've come to realize that there are really two components to this issue. The first is the quality of the work as it relates to the research and writing on a particular topic. The second is the quality of the ideas and topics that I locate and come to find important. I'm wondering if both of these items are contained within your description or if one or the other predominates?

You put “easy to have sympathy with theories” as a talent. Construed in a certain light this might come off as a hindrance if you aren't able to critique and build upon existing theories. In another light it simply means that you are willing to explore other theories that run in conflict or are simply foreign to the ones that you already align yourself with.

__Memo 2 Commentary:__ //Project A...// How do you plan on defining satisfaction and alienation and 'white collars'? How do you put boundaries on IT? Are there particular subcategories that you are concerned with more than others? Why do you find it important to work with the families of workers? Is this a way to control for truthfulness, delusion, or some other variable? Will you be doing comparisons between health status and suicide between countries, industries, or some other field? Why does suicide correlate with work satisfaction, most of my depression comes from my personal relationships outside of work or certain planets and stars lining up? This becomes particularly important in the context of ethnography methodology where you are supposed to be presenting a narrative/discussion using the words of your participants. If you start applying your own rubric to this then I don't know how that ends up working out. Is there really a 'scarcity' of work on alienation and work? This has been something of interest to people since at least Marx and arguably much earlier. Are you confining this statement specifically to IT and alienation, in which case your case studies would be more novel? Have you looked at the dissertations of Casey O'Donnell (graduated last year) and other books that review the subject to see if there really is a 'scarcity'? I'm wondering if you are worried about the alienation from work, the alienation from outside relationships, the alienation from the expectation people had when getting their early educations to what they are doing now, or some other alienation scheme? You might want to include in your fields of work (and subsequent publication options) 'management theory', workplace democracy (depending on where you go with this), new institutional theory out of sociology (check out Hess and others).

//Project B...// I'm wondering why you are confining engineering education strictly to colleges and not learning in the workplace? If you talk with Brent Volker he might have some interesting insights about the shaping of practices and personal development within and outside of university settings. In choosing your case studies, are you going to do comparative work between industry laden universities (e.g. RPI) versus colleges and universities that have not had to utilize the funding streams of industry? Is there really overwhelming dissatisfaction with higher education? This questions seems particularly critical when we are talking about engineers who basically get a passing grade on most things in society, at least in the U.S.

//Project C...// I like the framing of the topic better on this one, it eliminates the perception of bias that I encounter in the other two project descriptions. I'm assuming, through our discussions outside of this class, that you have more bias on this issue than you are letting on. Granted in those conversations we were talking about online video gaming. Is this topic an extension of this gaming or is it broader in scope to include all activities that are mediated through the internet? I'm wondering if the 'radical changes' include potentially good things that have occurred with new opportunities to connect with others, find less biased sources of information, etc.? Without a more detailed take on this project it becomes difficult for me to talk about the fields that might apply to the project and the potential funding options. Finally, in your focus on third world countries: 1) which countries are you going to look at, 2) are you going to look at rural/urban differences, 3) are you going to compare first and third world experiences, 4) what is your end game for this research, what do you think you are going to be concluding?