ScottShamp

Big Data and My Big Gut

“Locating Satellites.” Nope, it isn’t a B-52s song. It is what my “watch” is telling me. Quotation marks because the one thing that big digital device on my wrist can’t tell me (at least not that I have figured out, yet) is the time of day. Up at 5:30A for my morning run. I drag myself out of the sack early—I have to get rid of this big gut. iPod? Check. Favorite running shirt? Got it. Expensive high tech running shoes? Laced and ready. My new favorite running friend, my Garmin? The huge screen strapped to my wrist reads “Locating Satellites”—over and

“Where do you stay?”: Making sense of a new sense of place

A red silk shirt with blousey sleeves. A black ascot. And a black beret. It was an outfit tailored to make a skinny white kid with stringy hair look like a goober. In seventh grade, I was one of the first students bussed across town to help integrate the Rockdale County school system. Although I wouldn’t have said it then, being in the minority was a powerful learning experience. But poor Mr. Hudson, a former professional jazz musician, was relegated to special circle of hell where he had to teach ungainly white kids like me how to

Focus vs. Awareness: Seeing the Upside in Generation Graze

Professor Hazen came into the class and drew three lines on the chalk board (remember those?) — each at 45 degree angles to each other but not quite touching.

“What is it?” were his first words in the Psychology of Perception course I took my junior year at UGA.

“A triangle” the five students who weren’t afraid to talk on the first day of class said in unison.

“Nope. I drew lines. You drew the triangle.” He was right. They were just three disconnected lines. We organized the random visual data into something we could make sense of. A shape. A triangle.

Why don’t I want you to know about me?

I wanted to be a PROFESSOR. You know. Authoritative. Knowledgeable. Respected. Tweedy. Ok, a little intimidating and sort of aloof. You know, A PROFESSOR. I was only 27. I was worried students wouldn’t take me seriously — some weren’t that much younger than I was. So I only told them professional things — like what I studied, where I did my graduate work, the latest communication theories I ascribed to. The really exciting stuff, right? I told them the PROFESSORy kind of things — and I got on to the lectures. I showed them Dr. Shamp — I wasn’t Scott to them. I thought if they knew about real me, it would change the way that they interacted with me. So I kept my personal life private.

It’s all about ME! Relevance as the new media aesthetic.

I almost missed the High Balls. My favorite 80s band played at the Melting Point and I didn’t know until the last minute. Unforgivable. Believe it or not with all the music swirling around the Classic City, Athens does not have many places where you can go to dance. And I came within a few hours of missing the chance to strut my stuff to “Boogie Ooogie Ooogie.” And for all of you whose stomach just turned over at the thought me cutting the rug, I have it on good authority that I am a pretty good dancer. Let’s just say that all those seasons of “Dancing with the Stars” have not been for naught.