In such turbulent times when the economy is losing steam, people are losing their jobs and I am losing my mind it is helpful to laugh. Laughter is the best medicine? Even be it wry irony? Well, yes. Because all of us are in this together. We shall be poor, poor graduate students for the next 4 (aim for 4, get out in 8!) years and laugh we must.

Grad School can be funny if we make fun of our misery, and learn to laugh at ourselves. So for all my fellow sufferers, hope you enjoy this!

Theatre has always been something with which I have shared intimate ties. Acting is a passion, and while I have been fortunate enough to co-direct two full-fledged plays I feel my strength remains in displaying my histrionic skills in the glare of the arc lights!

I recently became aware of a fledgling organization - The South Asian Theatre Club. While I have yet to attend a meeting and understand their plans, it seems an interesting fit for me. Primarily, because I have realized that any professional theatre clubs here emphasize charcterization heavily. Therefore, it would be difficult for me to fulfill a role that doesn't require me to be an Indian (or someone from the sub-continenet anyway) given the stringent restrictions. Therefore, I shall try my luck with The South Asian Theatre Club. Wish me luck!

I have also passively observed some of the poetry and book-reading meets at Webster's cafe. And while these aren't "clubs", they are meeting points for individuals with similar literary interests. These meets especially interest me because poetry is something I am yet to acquire a taste for, given my limited understanding of verse. And yet, I strive to be a connoisseur. Again, good luck to me!

Finally, photography is something I have weakly dabbled in. And in State College, Arvind has been a constant source of inspiration. Expression through still photographs often speak louder and more coherently than you can imagine. Once I can afford to buy myself a snazzy camera, the Photography Club is one I would love to join.

And on a parting note, Groucho Marx famously said "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."
Touche!

'What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.'

The romance has just begun, yet living travel tales vicariously stokes the fire little by little. Because a journey begins for a reason, yet unravels through time to never resemble what it set out as.

A movie I had been meaning to watch for a long time, opens with Ernesto Guevara and Alberto Granada setting out on 'The Mighty One' to cover 8000 miles – from Argentina to Venezuela. They search out their amours, yet pry themselves free from their warm embraces to undertake a journey that promises to take them further away from familiarity and comfort. Yet 'The Mighty One' is boarded to leave their selves behind, yet discover them so forth.

The journey tumbles through mishaps – and 'The Mighty One' soon falls to the grueling demands of the restless travelers. The stories of suffering they hear evoke in them indignation and sympathy. But say they 'we travel just for travel' while the unfortunate couple that 'travels looking for jobs' looks on in wonder. Although their journey is graced with benediction by the couple, the vast rift that exists in their purposes pulsates patently. A new understanding, nebulous yet palpable, begins to search for form.

'How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?' wonders Ernesto. How indeed? The nostalgia he feels when he reaches Macchu Pichu - a manmade world perfect yesterday, yet spawning the manmade world that created the divide, the chaos of today. Ernesto and Alberto try through their personal symbols in San Pablo, Peru at the leprosy camp. They refuse the gloves that divide, they swim across the river that segregates, and they admit openly to a life that each one of us strives to survive.

The journey collects memories of people and places that are alive. Friends made on the way are reflected back upon through black and white snapshots where they still move imperceptibly, trying hard to stand still. Yet these memories make Ernesto and Alberto stronger – as friends and as human beings. That they survived not only the inconsistencies in terrain and temperature, but also those in the trials and tribulations of human beings, was a tribute to the journey on road, and the journey of their souls.

For a while now I have admired the work of Tapan Parikh. While he may not be the most famous person in Human-Computer-Interaction, it being a vast field, he has attained success and much deserved recognition in his focus on the use of computing to support sustainable economic development across the World. In his own words:

“I want to learn how to build appropriate, affordable rural information systems; systems that are accessible to end users, support learning and reinforce community efforts towards empowerment, economic development and sustainable use of natural resources. Some specific topics that I am interested in include human-computer interaction (HCI), mobile phone computing and information systems supporting microfinance, smallholder agriculture and global health.”

Tapan Parikh is currently an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. He also holds an affiliate appointment in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Washington. Some of his most influential projects are:

1.       e-IMCI: Mobile Protocols for Diagnosis and Treatment of Childhood Illnesses

2.       CommCare: Mobile Information Tools for Community Health Workers

3.       CAM: Automating Paper-based Processes using a Camera-equipped Mobile Phone

This last project (which was Tapan Parikh’s PhD thesis) is of special interest to me as I have, over the past few months, been reading about its application in the field of Micro-finance. Through using this application microfinance institutions can relocate fewer human resources to villages, who in turn can communicate the credit-worthiness of a villager through the CAM utility supporting paper based interaction. Lesser human resource costs translate into lower interest rates for the villagers, an accomplishment that truly helps these villagers. I personally believe that the direction that rural development must take is empowering and equipping the rural dwellers, rather than offering them help and assistance. Therefore, lending small principal amounts to the rural dwellers to enable them to start their own modest businesses, rather than assisting them through charity, has effects that are lasting and steeped in self-reliance. Here is where my interests become similar to Tapan Parikh’s – a man whose work I greatly admire and wish to emulate. 
 

One could sing paeans to IST’s gesture of kindness – by offering us new students tracks to follow and focus on. I chose Human-Computer-Interaction as my track early in, if not before, the program and over the past couple of months my interest has been piqued in the following journals where I would like to publish by the end of my PhD tenure here at IST.

1.       CHI

But of course. Although Dr. Carroll never fails to point out the “Computer” before the “Human”, it remains a prestigious forum to have ones papers published in. ACM SIGCHI, the ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, brings together people working on the design, evaluation, implementation, and study of interactive computing systems for human use. ACM SIGCHI provides an international, interdisciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas about the field of human-computer interaction (HCI).

2.       The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

Primarily because they cover a very wide and very interesting range of research areas that are relevant to the IJHCS. The most interesting to me at this initial stage are Natural Language Interaction and Innovative Interaction Techniques. Their website says:

The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies publishes original research over the whole spectrum of work relevant to the theory and practice of innovative interactive systems. The journal is inherently interdisciplinary, covering research in computing, artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics, communication, design, engineering, and social organization, which is relevant to the design, analysis, evaluation and application of innovative interactive systems. Papers at the boundaries of these disciplines are especially welcome, as it is our view that interdisciplinary approaches are needed for producing theoretical insights in this complex area and for effective deployment of innovative technologies in concrete user communities.

3.       Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing

Although I haven’t verified this journal’s general reputation, I can safely assume that being a constituent of the Journals of ACM I cannot go completely wrong by managing to publish in it :)

This journal excites me because one of my concerns is to bring digital technology to the masses back in India, which boasts of hundreds of different languages and even more dialects. (Insert tidbit here – Miao often wonders why Arvind and I never converse in an Indian language. Well truth is, we don’t know any common Indian language!! Alas! The trials and tribulations of such diversity! ) The website says:

TALIP broadly covers issues in NLP for Asian Languages. Aspects concerning theory, systems design, evaluation and applications will be covered. Emphasis will be placed on the originality and the practical significance of the reported research. Papers related to Western language information processing techniques and theory will also be considered if the ideas are shown to be equally applicable to Asian languages.

And that’s all folks. Until the next post!

I got our maps out and drew a black line between Jerusalem and Acre. It was about a quarter of an inch long. Lahore was three feet away at the edge of the map. Peking lay halfway across the room on an entirely different sheet. It seemed a long way indeed.

-William Dalrymple

In Xanadu

Dalrymple weaves a rich, real and rare rendition through a post-revolution tense Iran, the hostile terrain of Baluchistan and the unchanging desert sands of China and Outer Mongolia. The journey begins at the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, flanked by the mountains of age, the histories of eons, the conflicts in the name of god. Minute dots and dashes spread across a flat map of inferior representations, and the destination is very, very far away indeed. Dalrymple trudges on for four months, an entire season. Summer leaves fade and fly away from him, towards where he wants to be. Mountains change hue and height, as do people. But they change their stories too. And Dalrymple can tell them well. Stories of splendor yet suffering, of royalty and their subjected. Of God and his love. Of God and our love. 

Dalrymple journeys on with his phial of holy oil to reach the forbidden city. To reach Xanadu. He follows in Marco Polo’s footsteps through the Silk Route, and can boast of little else but Polo’s brilliance and insanity. In Xanadu is a beautiful book that lends a perspective that renders travel indispensable to life, lessons and above all, to love.

I interviewed Sharoda Paul for this assignment, someone who had displayed impressive initiative to lend a sense of belonging to IST's bright new current crop. She has tangible ideas, she has stable perspective and she has a lot to share. A good choice if I may say so myself :)

Ishita: What research are you doing? What is your dissertation topic?

Sharoda: I am interested in studying how technology can be designed to help people collaboratively find, share, and make sense of information. In my dissertation, I am looking at how groups use computers for collaborative information seeking and sensemaking. I'm conducting an ethnographic study of the collaborative information seeking and sensemaking activities of healthcare providers in an emergency department. I plan on applying the findings of my ethnographic study to the design of tools that can enhance collaborative sensemaking in information seeking tasks. My research interests broadly lie in the fields of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), human-computer interaction (HCI), collaborative and social search, medical informatics, and information science.

Ishita: Have you attended any conferences?

Sharoda: Yes, I have attended the Fall Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA 2006), the ACM conference on Group Work (GROUP 2007), the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), the iConference (2006 and 2008), and Connections (2007). I plan to attend the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2008) and AMIA 2008 in November this year.

Ishita: Have you published any papers?

Sharoda: Yes.

Journals
Reddy, M., Paul, S.A., Abraham, J., McNeese, M.D. deFlitch, C.J., and Yen, J. (Accepted). Challenges to Effective Crisis Management: Using Information and Communication Tools to Coordinate Emergency Medical Services and Emergency Department Teams. To appear in the International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI).

Conferences
Paul, S.A., Reddy, M. and deFlitch, C.J. (Accepted). The Usefulness of Information and Communication Tools in Crisis Response. To appear in Proceedings of the Fall Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA ‘08), Washington, D.C.

Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2008). Information and Communication Tools as Aids to Collaborative Sensemaking. In Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008) Extended Abstracts, Florence, Italy.

Zhu, S., Abraham, J., Paul, S.A., Reddy, M., Yen, J., Pfaff, M., and deFlitch, C.J. (2007). R-CAST-MED: Applying Intelligent Agents to Support Emergency Medical Decision Making Teams. Proceedings of the 11th Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Conference (AIME 2007), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

 
Purao, S., Paul S.A., and Smith, S. (2007). Understanding Enterprise Integration Project Risks: A Focus Group Study. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA 2007), p. 850-854, Regensburg, Germany.

There is a distinct similarity in our research interests, and that is empowering people through newer, more intelligent technology that makes precious information available at their fingertips. Information that is easily accessible, easily interpreted, and easily manipulated for one’s use. Moreover, one of the ideas still rather nebulous in my head is to apply mobile computing to health accessibility models. Of course Sharoda has a more dedicated and focused direction in medical informatics. Maybe when I am getting interviewed two years down the line, I will find many more things in common with Sharoda :)

A big thank you to Sharoda for her time!   

One of the first revelations offered to me in IST was that Dr. Carroll was going to be my advisor. The second was that he was happily married to Professor Mary Beth Rosson, who had been my other choice for a potential advisor. Connecting my choices for graduate advisors on such a personal level lent to them a perspective that was happy, intimate and interesting all at the same time.

Dr. Carroll is a pioneer in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, an Edward M Frymoyer Chair Professor at IST. He is also the co-director, with Mary Beth Rosson, of the Laboratory for Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning. He holds degrees in Mathematics and Information Sciences from Lehigh University, and Psychology from Columbia University. It was while working at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Centre that Dr. Carroll met Professor Rosson, a little trivia I took back home with me from course 597 :)

From what I gathered from Dr. Carroll’s homepage and from a few tidbits off Bernie, Dr. Carroll and Professor Rosson have a lovely daughter. A beautiful lab-Kerby completes the family. More so with a red hat and spreading the Christmas cheer :)

And also, is that Dr. Carroll with long hair and a guitar is his hands, on his website? Possibly, the most intriguing detail off there that needs further investigation. More on that once Dr. Carroll returns from Greece.

The complexities of good technology shall forever and more be abstracted from the user, but what makes this superior is how effortlessly it can be utilized by its users. IST understands that technology created by humans is also technology created for humans. And this is the unique flavor of IST – “humanized technology”.

Which leads me to believe that IST’s flat structure is really quite clever. A student is able to belong to one discipline, yet belong to several. One toils away in Risk and Security Analysis to develop solid technology that would best prevent insider attacks, only to realize one day that a deeper psychological understanding of the insider threat’s motivations could lend a very comprehensive flavor to the problem. And IST understands that – absorbing stimuli from multiple disciplines is the most inclusive way to resolve real-world problems.

This is where I intend to find myself a comfortable little niche in IST. Somewhere between digital technology and sociology and information and…..well-ensconced in the elusive spaces between academic disciplines to solve problems, make a difference. Yes, you might say I believe that IST’s structure works rather well. And as for the problem of explaining with a certain amount of self-confidence what exactly it is that we study – if you know what you do, you bet your friend will understand that too :)

To conclude, I wanted to touch upon Dr. Tapia’s point of how a fledgling IST began within Penn State – a large university with established departments and their resources at its disposal. It was an interesting point because it touches upon the fact that IST really isn’t that old and it needs all the recognition and resources it can get. And such a careful affiliation is something that adds to IST’s flavor.

Selecting where and what you want to study during the application process can be rather daunting. The selection warrants careful rumination and decision because there are high chances this decision can direct the path your life will tread for a long, long time. Chancing upon an I-school was like a fervent prayer answered.

 I feel the beauty of an I-school lies in the fact that anyone can become a part of it. Academic discrimination is difficult in such an institution where scholars collaborate to effect a change in virtually every vertical that there is. After all information can hardly be removed from any field – software, health, education, financial – in a time and age of information symmetry. Therefore great, vibrant minds from sociology, psychology, computer science, business administration, chemistry, electrical engineering come to an I-school and, collaborate and cogitate. This lends an I-school a diversity that is seldom seen in traditional departments, which enriches the academic experience for anyone within the school. It especially becomes important when real-world problems are presented to elicit solutions that are complete and applicable across verticals. And on a bad day, at least a good, wholesome discussion has been had :)
   What is mostly seen to be common across I-schools is the fact that they all look to emancipate the world (or parts of it) with accurate, timely and reliable information. The distinctions crop up between digital information and library sciences (for eg. Georgia Institute of Technology versus University of Texas, Austin) or sometimes in the anticipated scholarly ends  (eg. CMU – public policy versus SMU – business solutions). However, at the end of the day the I-schools are an academic revolution looking to achieve working answers through intensive, interdisciplinary study.

 I joined an I-school for very personal reasons. It was important for me to extract everything useful from my four years of undergraduate study and extend this over to other academic disciplines in the coming years. All for the sole purpose of exciting social transformation through converting digital information to  empowering knowledge. Moreover, IST offered me a chance to study with some of the best in the field of Human-Computer-Interaction, and this really sealed my decision. I am glad I wasn’t disappointed.

Purpose drives me. I am still young, and my whole life (minus 23 years) awaits me, yet it remains incredibly important on a personal level to outline the forthcoming years in the most reasonable way that I possibly can. This includes studying towards achieving professional satisfaction and investing in maintaining relationships. But most importantly to attain wisdom in a lifetime to assume a kind, compassionate and fair lifestyle.  Imbibing, interaction and introspection leads to a rare learning that opens our eyes, our minds and our spirits. And that is the point now anyway, isn’t it?

I am armed with a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology; however I still feel that I remain academically in my nascent stages. There is so much to learn, even more to explore, that a question such as my academic identity can only be attempted in a most incomplete manner right now. But currently, I look forward to intensive study in my field of research, and eventually integrating this with my ambitions of targeting the rural regions of India.

I want to pursue Human-Computer-Interaction in a vastly social context. In a day and age where digital technology has revolutionized and emancipated society in a way that was hitherto inconceivable -  a comprehensive understanding of a broad subject like HCI excites me tremendously. The scope for dispersing technology in a software illiterate population by making it more accessible and usable definitely provides for a comprehensive academic examination. ITC’s e-choupal movement in India remains a huge inspiration. This movement provided farmers with computer kiosks to eliminate the exploitative middlemen and to tighten logistics. Thus, these farmers were empowered with real time information of the market prices and they escaped being cheated – a noble feat accomplished by bringing technology to the masses. I am currently toying with the idea of integrating this idea with microfinance models, health accessibility models or mobile technology models.

People might suffer entire lifetimes before they are able to answer this question satisfactorily. Yet here I am attempting this question. What magic that elusive A grade can weave!

Let me begin by the obvious – I am an Indian. However, the significance of this is reflected through an assortment of factors. Firstly, almost every Indian is exposed to at least two languages over the course of his or her lifetime.  I have been exposed to five, amongst which I am fairly proficient in three. This language extravaganza instilled in me a rare appreciation for expression through words. The beautiful nuances that a rich vocabulary can offer continues to amaze me, and hopefully every day I will improve in my endeavours to play with words, like an artist who plays with his palette or a sculptor with his chisel.

A lot of this appreciation came through a voracious appetite for books. I am positively passionate about reading. Unfortunately, over the years I have developed a rather elitist approach and often tend to dismiss certain authors or genres. However, the more I try to sit down and pen one measly chapter of my non-existent book, the more I become conscious of the immense devotion and aptitude required for such a venture. Maybe someday someone could scoff at my book! Now that would be an enormous personal achievement. The book I mean, not the scoffing :)

Being an Indian also made me very sensitive to the haves and have-nots. Something which I can elaborate upon in my next two posts. But personally, this acute sensitivity has made me an idealist in terms of future aspirations. This almost never bodes well in a far-from-perfect world, but I continue to have faith. I believe any and every effort made towards a better world is destined to be a part of the bigger picture. And I am jumping on the train for that one for sure!

Finally, I am a curious, curious individual and Google is my best friend. Only after my most wonderful dog whom I miss tremendously. I think I am a better friend than a daughter but that’s probably because my allowance was never enough. I also try (Note: TRY) to be funny. I am mostly reasonable, mostly agreeable but if I get a little moody sometimes it is only because I am born in September. On that note, I will sign off. Thank you for listening!