Those Who Can't Tweet, Analyze: early Twitter traffic at #AAA2015

I won't be rolling into AAA until tomorrow, but I wanted to check the conference traffic before I left.

At this point in the game, there's not much going on--one large component (in blue) where people (and institutions) are publicizing their papers and booths.  So far, there's not much commentary on papers and presentations.

Let's look at the top tweets by in-degree centrality.

1. RT @AmericanAnthro: Headed to #AAA2015? Make sure you download the mobile app through iTunes (https://t.co/80rZY5CR6O) or Google Play (http…

2. Conference Chic, or, How to Dress Like an Anthropologist https://t.co/GFWOIA1dFd What are YOU packing for #AAA2015?

3. Blizzard warnings in effect for Denver tomorrow. Take note #AAA2015 attendees, bring warm clothes!

4. If you're in Denver this week for #AAA2015, please stand with us in solidarity. Spread the word., https://t.co/kHmoxjIXVM

5. Two...more...days...#AAA2015 https://t.co/62eb20zOhX

6. NEW: The Anti-Boycott Resolution: Entrenching the Status Quo, Denying Justice #aaa2015 https://t.co/C8dFXvWFxz https://t.co/XthvibLvqb

7. Savage Minds at #AAA2015 https://t.co/vC2VREjdaS

8. Looking for short thought pieces on #medanth panels at #AAA2015 for 2nd Opinion, the SMA newsletter! @somatosphere @culanth 

An interesting addition to the usual tweets from AAA, Wenner-Gren, etc., are tweets on the boycott resolution--it's encouraging that they've been re-tweeted multiple times!  

Networked Spirits and Smart Séances: Aura and the Anthropological Gaze in the Era of the Internet of Things

2015 has been declared the year of the “Internet of Things”, the promised (or threatened) era when our commodities communicate among themselves. But even the most optimistic prognostications cannot conceal deep ambivalences about objects and agency. How do we think about our things when they communicate and act independently of us? How do we frame our relationships with them? How do we articulate distributed intelligence? And how are others imbricated in those relationships? Yet, anthropologists have been asking these questions for some time, and, in this essay, I revisit some ghosts of anthropology's past in order to prompt spectral evocation of these anthropological futures. Through revisiting anthropological fascinations with the nineteenth-century séances, phantasmagoria, commodities and auras, this essay looks to nineteenth-century confusions not only to reflect on the confusions of the present, but also to gesture to possible futures where our lively things might help us challenge suspect dichotomies of human and non-human.

In History and Anthropology

And also (in draft form) on my personal page.