Inside The Machine
So it’s early April 2015.
I’m beginning the thesis writeup.
Some say that it’s supposed to have started a long time prior but for me it’s taken a huge amount of thinking, reading, researching and generally “doing” out in the field and living life to get to this point.
It would appear that yet again that Scrivener is the place for this to be.
It proves time and time again to be the best place to compose, construct and in general navigate around inside the data like a crazed ball in a pinball machine, composing offline and online and across all devices always searching for that seamlessness. Therein lies the crux to this PhD in general.
I’ve been inside the machine and now pulling out and hovering over the surface. In my dreams and away from the machine, the computer and it’s various screen points I see deeper into it’s allure, its flickering attraction.
Its at that point that I know that in order for this PhD to be real to and to contribute to humanity that I need to provide evidence that I have thoroughly considered the null hypothesis written it seems only yesterday but in reality almost two years ago.
Hardly seems possible that time has slipped away that fast. To the outsider, I’ve spent it seems a disproportionate amount of time looking at, testing, crashing and exploring systems that interconnect daily activity, research methodology and fieldwork.
Without all of that over the last five years I think I would have produced a cookie cutter PhD with little substance but now I’ll have published my data openly, have titrated what is of the essence, have examined whats inclusive or exclusive and then have started to prepare draft 2 of the thesis which will be entirely “inside” - one long document, much like what I did when I produced #realstory, my personal story.
Then there is the many many publications I’ve written that are already out there on the web, from blog and journal entries, forum posts, papers I’ve written and book chapters. Then there is the data that exists in its form as it’s own entity like photos which each speak a thousand words.
If that is the case then I have a diatribe of a billion words already spoken yet to be written. So here begins the writing part, daily and in earnest….again.
