Ethnography and More

If there is one real advantages to "second wave" Internet based e-commerce it is the simple fact that you can get with little or no effort just about any used book you want other than an original Guttenberg. It is pretty awesome that you can get a decent copy of a book that is out of print or isn't in the library. It is terrific, and I wonder how people did their work without it back in the dark ages.

What is most exceptional is that while people are using various online "marketplaces" like Amazon it really is small merchants who drive this, not the big boys. It's "peer to peer" marketing.

One book I just got this way is a book by Edwin Hutchins called "Culture and Inference : A Trobriand Case Study." It's going to be quite helpful. One of the things it will provide is a methodology for research. It also makes the point on how much of our expertise is culturally embedded. Looking very much to reading it.

Also, spent all day Saturday on a big old Coast Guard cutter out in a snowstorm with ten degree weather and 40 mile per hour winds. I even got to steer. It was great!