i ditched the PhD

something happened. i ditched the PhD program  — doctor of humanities in culture and technology –  this past friday after only 6 hours of classes. i was the only one in the room with a laptop. that it was tethered to my blackberry seemed like magic from another world to my new colleagues. the history of technology professor was fascinated with/by torpedoes. and the philosophy prof, mid-thirties guy, very full of eager — bombastic if i am to be totally candid – discourse on macchiavelli’s the prince, asked the group if we had heard of facebook. then he told us all to sign up for his new facebook group page, and described facebook as “easy and it’s free.” most of us involved in culture and technology are riveted by the fact that more than 120 million users sign on to facebook every day. the pedagogic underpinnings of the program were not my cup of tea.

now, i mean no harm or judgment by these remarks. and i take full responsibility for not doing my research thoroughly. i was enchanted by the idea of a doctoral program. but i’m just not interested in nor concerned with comparing macchiavelli to, well, i’m not really sure where that was going in the context of the research.  that dialectic bores me, and quite honestly i have a tendency to get bored way too easily. i’m sure i bore others too. works both ways. this is a character defect i am working on, although i get bored with the work a lot.

but let me take a less personal approach:

i like to apply fukuyama’s thesis about the end of history when i’m thinking about the history of technology  and, from the national academy of engineering,  here’s what i think is a crisp summary of  all that one needs to know about the history of technology:

specifically,  “ In the nineteenth century, technology referred simply to the practical arts used to create physical products, everything from wagon wheels and cotton cloth to telephones and steam engines. In the twentieth century, the meaning of the word was expanded to include everything involved in satisfying human material needs and wants, from factories and the organizations that operate them to scientific knowledge, engineering know-how, and technological products themselves.”

i love talking about electricity television cars phones the break-up of AT&T and i do think there’s still a lot that’s good in a re-read of zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. maybe. supercrunchers is better though. or crowdsourcing. and as regards online communities and social networks, about which i am insanely passionate, i’m more interested in looking at ancient irish clachans to understand the anthropology of facebook than i am in torpedoes or the art of war.

so i ditched my PhD program after 6 hours. and i have no guilt. but i still think you should all call me dr falconer.