Thursday, 31 July 2014

Why #2Interface: expanding my focus + focusing my interests = mastering the enterprising researcher

In truth, Ways 2 Interface is the presentation and exploration of a very broad research interest, opposed to being a research project in the traditional sense. However, that is not to say that its very broad research interest will not go on to be refined into a clearly measurable and manageable research project in its own right. 

 Ways 2 Interface is very much an expression of my overall working method, it is acting as a transition into my upcoming masters; it is a means of intellectually challenging myself further, while also exercising much of what I have been researching. Ultimately, as I have always done, it is about finding my own ways of being...
"Science is largely a communal activity, to which people with many different skills contribute. These include some who are good with their hands, compulsive gatherers and arrangers of facts, persistent seekers of answers to niggling questions, those with a feel for animals or rocks or plants, and many others. All have their parts to play." 
- Len Fisher, How To Dunk A Doughnut, 2003:176

What follows is primarily an explanation of how the Ways 2 Interface project will relate to my upcoming masters and my overall enterprising plans. 

 In the post I detail:

  • The incentives for starting the Ways 2 Interface project
  • The advantages of starting the Ways 2 Interface project
  • How Ways 2 Interface has helped in clarifying my overall focus.
  • How Ways 2 Interface has influenced the choice of my masters
  • How Ways 2 Interface has transitioned my attitude from undergraduate study towards being comfortable with the prospect of postgraduate study.
  • The various online courses - MOOCs - I have undertaken over the past year and how they relate to Ways 2 Interface and my Masters.
  • How Ways 2 Interface will be carried over and further developed within my masters
  • How my masters, in accordance with Ways 2 Interface, will nurture and develop my empirical research skills.
  • My plans for the Ways 2 Interface project once I have completed my masters

It's a bit long, but it does provide a very thorough explanation...




 Where 2 start? 

Ways 2 Interface all started with Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, the award-winning research paper that served as the theoretical dissertation of my BA (Hons) and was also the highest marked paper of the course, ever!

With the final year of my BA (Hons) my attitude was all or nothing - I threw everything I had into delivering the best work I could possibly produce, in ll of my final year ventures.
Many sleepless nights worth.
Fortunately, it paid off.

However, when you devote that level of time and energy towards something, by the time you have completed what you set out to do, it is incredibly hard to shake off - which is exactly what I was banking on.

For university graduates career prospects are bleak; it's not necessarily that you can not find work, but that securing work in your ideal profession has become harder and harder. Throughout all of my time at university, deep down I always knew that the only way I was going to do what I wanted to do, was to just do it myself - figure it out and do it myself. This is why I spent so much time at university conducting my own study that dealt with concerns beyond merely those of my joint degree: Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies. 

However, the prospect of actually having to go about creating my own opportunities was a prospect that had always terrified my, like so many others I genuinely believed the commonly cultivated misconception that I did not have it in me.

 Fortunately, a formidable amount of research states otherwise:

"in revealing talent to be a process, the simple idea of genetic giftedness is forever debunked. It is no longer reasonable to attribute talent or success to a specific gene or any other mysterious gift. The real gift, it turns out, belongs to virtually all of us: it is the plasticity and the extraordinary responsiveness built right into basic human biology." 
- David Shrenk, The Genius in All of Us, 2011:58.

Therefore, the only way I was ever going to get into the reality of creating my own opportunities was by actually getting into the reality of creating my own opportunities. I had to get out of my retiring mindset of fear and pro-actively into the habit of doing what I really wanted to be doing, when I eventually did graduated from university. 

Furthermore, I could not afford to wait, I had to get a head start, so that when I did finish university, I would be in a position to use all of the accumulated momentum, experience and understanding to continue creating my own opportunities. 

Crucially, also, while Ways of Being did start out as a Film and Screen Studies dissertation with a focus on film, it very quickly developed beyond that into a wide-ranging media focus, with a concern less focused on the cinema screen and more on the concept of an interface:
"we have stopped viewing spectacle content on a screen, and we now experience and interact with it via an interface. If there is a great deal of neurobiological participation happening on the spectator’s part, then perhaps this offers a more accurate way to talk about the process by which the spectator interfaces with any type of film spectacle." 
- Ways of Being, 2013:151

 Basically, the entirety of the Ways of Being research project was unfinished business, so much so that I continued to conduct research even after I had completed the final paper.

Ultimately, all that research needed an outlet, through which I could bring it all into focus - hence phase 2 of Ways of Being, vis-à-vis Ways 2 Interface.

Phase 2: a further means of exploration and a canvas of speculation
From the bison sketched on the cave wall to the latest meme posted on the facebook wall, the interface of the spectator and the spectacle, a physical and cognitive intermingling of consumer and content, is an integral identity and reality constituting process, that quite literally tells the story of our universal and underlying ways of being. 
Building on the award-winning research paper, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, in a continuing endeavour to reconceive the spectator and the spectacle as the-actual-being-within-and-perceived-being-without, Ways 2 Interface is a progressively inclined transdisciplinary research project that reconsiders the study of the content and the consumer in relation to a wider spectrum of knowledge and considerations.    
The fundamental focus of the project is the idea of an interfacing process - the introspective and expressive capacity inherent to us all - that we have always interwoven throughout our world and that we continue to do so at a formidably greater capacity in our contemporary digital realities.  
By examining the habits and manifestations of our cognitive, corporeal, cultural and connected ways to interface, Ways 2 Interface will aim to build a unified understanding of this interfacing process - the brand at the heart of all our stories. 
We are the stories we tell ourselves, the key to understanding the purpose of the interfacing process is in realising both the deceits of the abstractions in which we constantly immerse ourselves and the ways in which we constantly immerse ourselves in the truths of those abstract deceits.  
From the two million year odyssey of our intellectual growth, to our current plugged in transmedia and transhuman digital re-birth, Ways 2 Interface covers a lot of ground in its creative academic endeavour to ascertain how an interfacing habit has always driven our ways of being stories, how it can empower us to create better content, how it can enable us to embody better brand identities and what it can tell us about the transcendence of where our networked narrative is going...
- About #2Interface 

It is a hugely tall order for a single research project and certainly something that a single research project would be unable to fully fulfil and, even when I conceived it, I was aware of this, which is why (at least, at the moment) Ways 2 Interface should be seen as a canvas onto which I am conducting a great deal of speculation, based on claims and research already in existence. 

 Ultimately - Ways 2 Interface as a very elaborate notebook - is acting as a further means of intellectual exercise, through which I can craft a refined, concise and manageable research focus, at the end of which a clear conclusion may eventually be produced. 


In truth, Ways 2 Interface is the presentation and exploration of a very broad research interest, opposed to a research project in the traditional sense. However, that is not to say that is not say that its very broad research interest will not go on to be refined into a clearly measurable and manageable research project in its own right. Ways 2 Interface is very much an expression of my overall working method and of the working method of many other researchers besides. Ultimately, it is about finding my own way...

This is why I refer to Ways 2 Interface as being a transdisciplinary research project. 

Transdisciplinary is a relatively new title, but it basically means the same as interdisciplinary:

"involving two or more academic, scientific, or artistic areas of knowledge : involving two or more disciplines." 
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 However, transdisciplinary sounds hell of a lot cooler!

Transdisciplinary has a more modern, radical and innovative ring to it, which is I why I have snapped it up for this project, it's time to get out of the box!
Ultimately, [Ways 2 Interface] is about defining and refining my own branded speciality based around my fundamental focus; that will, in turn, enable me to build my own self-sufficient infrastructure to maintain and manifest my ideal lifestyle. 
- Smartlife: why I am doing, what I am doing

Ways 2 Interface is transdiciplinary because it's focus is not just rooted in the concerns of academia and neither are mine!

There is an analyst and a creator in me - a scientist and an artist, the thing that they have in common is that they are both explorers.
They are also do-ers who deliver on what they say they are going to do; albeit, not always when they say they are going to do it (I am working on meeting my deadlines), but they do deliver eventually.

When I graduated I knew I was heading down the entrepreneurial route and in beginning my research in this particular area I noticed while my character shared many characteristics with established and successful entrepreneurs, the two major characteristics and/or skills I was lacking were:
  1. An ability to thoroughly and effectively market myself.
  2. The resourcefulness and business knowledge necessary to make a living from what I am passionate about doing.
While they have subdivided into many areas, these two areas of research have been the major progenitors and guiding forces behind the research I have been conducting here on Ways 2 Interface and within the other areas of my larger research web, that my primary blog Something to do with Film delves into from time to time. 
"I refer to my research as being a research web, because a single research topic of that web never finds itself isolated; when I am researching one specific area, I am gaining knowledge that is prevalent to several other areas - it is my very own personal and collaborative network of research." 
Therefore, while Ways 2 Interface is building on the research concerns of Ways of Being, it is equally nurturing those of my creative entrepreneurial temperament; not just with its reflections and investigations into the inherent storytelling of successful branding and marketing, but actually within the process of building this website/blog/platform.

This research project has provided me with a practical opportunity to build a branded identity around a specific focus - in the this case the actual research project. 

 That is exactly why I ultimately decided to orchestrate the next phase of this research on a website platform, because the process of putting it online in the public domain so to speak would require me to concisely sum it up into its own distinct branded identity.

It's called

Ways 2 Interface - because it's short and sounds interesting, because you are not quite sure what it is about, but it sounds modern and maybe it deals with our ways to interface?

opposed to calling it

Peter O'Brien's extended research project into the spectator's relationship with the spectacle - that just sounds bloody boring and who the hell is Peter O'Brien - nobody cares!

 Hence, why I have invested a little money in securing the domain:

 www.ways2interface.com

 opposed to using the free

 www.ways2interface.blogspot.com 

 because it belongs to itself, not to Blogger a.k.a. Blogspot. 

Ways 2 Interface - it's about our highly intricate and highly complicated relationship with screens - that is what the website banner graphic tells you and, that's good, because that is exactly what Ways 2 Interface is about.















Every element of the Ways 2 Interface brand is intended to elaborate on elements of the research interests Ways 2 Interface is looking into.

The @Ways2Interface twitter description of the project:


For #Creatives #Academics #Enterprisers. Our ways #2interface = our #waysofbeing #brands #stories #hashtags. #Transdisciplinary #research @nonirishjazzman.

 The Ways 2 Interface Avatar graphic:

I even made the hashtag a part of its overall branded identity of Ways 2 Interface!
If you have been following my online presence over the past year, then you will know that I have been constantly re-jigging and refinning the branded identity of that online presence, because my entrepreneurial ventures are going to develop from that online presence, so it had better be bloody good!

 The Ways 2 Interface site originally looked like this...









... However, I changed it to it's current design because the first design had too much of a corporate and traditional academic follow the guidelines (boring) feel to it. The visual design of the site needed to have an overall aesthetic presentation that was closer to the chaotic, but conscientious feel that is present within in the website banner graphic, because that is representative of the project and my approach to it. The project is aimed at creatives, academics and enterprisers precisely because those were the areas of research and knowledge I personally was looking to refine and nurture through the orchestration of this project. Therefore, the visual design had to be a fusion of those three areas - it needed to be a hybrid.

 Just as I have done on my primary blog, Something to do with Film, and the entirety of my online presence, I have used Ways 2 Interface as a means to figure out how to concisely and effectively brand something.

 If you can successfully brand something, then you are one step closer to successfully marketing it and if you can successfully market your brand to your target audience, who reciprocate by showing a genuine invested interest in what you have to offer, then you have a viable profit producing business model on your hands. 



As I did with all of my final year projects, I have engineered Ways 2 Interface to serve more than just one purpose. It is a space to lay down and share my speculations and as a means of practising all of the knowledge I am gaining from my research. 

 Practical experience, not speculation or guessing, that will eventually be utilised to contribute to the success of my entrepreneurial ventures. In fact, I have already started down that route...

However, what I have done with Was 2 Interface is far from perfect, and the facebook page and Google+Ways 2 Interface page could do with a great deal more love - they ar eboth examples of something that just have not been marketed. However, the point of this exercise has been to make the worst of the mistakes here and now, so that I can avoid then later on, when they could really throw a spanner into the works!


The reason why so many people fail at something is not because they are not capable of doing it, it is because they do not thoroughly research it or have a practice run at it. That is what I learnt multiple times from my degree and which I put to formidably good use in my final year and here I do likewise.


If you are not willing to fail, then you are not willing to succeed.
Ways of Being and the entirety of my final year showed me that I could do it and especially so when I put all of my mind and body to the task and precisely because I had failed many times over. I am proud to say that with Ways 2 Interface, that is exactly what I have continued to do.



Mastering 2 types of research: Non-empirical and empirical


 In order to produce reliable results, the domain of research is a hugely over-complicated process; even more so considering the wide plethora of nitpicking research methodologies out there. 

 However, for an overview's sake, if we were to break research down into two clearly defined areas in order for me to outline why cultivating my research is hugely beneficial to development of my overall skillset, then we would find ourself with the following two groups of research:

1) Non-empirical research. This is research anyone can do, but more effectively if approached with a critical mindset - this research is digging research. Finding the information and claims you need that have already been generated from previous observations, experimentation and research. 

Aside from conducting a few of my own original observations, this is the research approach I utilised for the orchestration of Ways of Being. 

2) Empirical research. This is original research that the researcher will build a clearly defined and measurable research project around and in which the researcher will conduct their own experimentation, observations and data collections, etc.  

This is the research that the research project requirement of my upcoming MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise will enable me to nurture, which is one of the reasons why my masters will be invaluable in further developing my larger autonomous skillset. 

With my masters I was looking for a course that had an inherent entrepreneurial focus and would allow me a great deal of autonomy, as I had experienced through my degree and which I favour in almost every endeavour I undertake. 

However, while examining all of the strictly entrepreneurially inclined degrees out there, I believed that I would have to sacrifice the research inclination that I had developed throughout my BA (Hons) and which I wanted to develop further.

 Foretunately, the MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise (that I ill soon be undertaking) is a highly innovative degree incorporating and nurturing aspects of different disciplines; one such integral component of the degree is research. 

"Basic research used to be pretty straightforward. A scientist had an idea, performed the research, and disseminated the results broadly through publications. 

That paradigm has shifted. Today, scientists can take their work beyond a publication by patenting and commercializing resulting technologies. The government and universities alike are encouraging researchers to take their work out of the lab and into the commercial sector." 
- What Researchers Who Want To Be Entrepreneurs Need To Know
Additionally, the course also highlighted the ability to conduct research as an integral component of successful digital creatives and entrepreneurs of the future - a match made in heaven!
The MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise (MSc) is designed for people who are seeking to develop their abilities in order to operate in the digital world or prepare themselves for future research in this field. Future industries depend upon people who are equipped with creative ideas, entrepreneurial skills and technological knowledge. Studying Creative Technology and Enterprise will prepare you for a rapidly-changing global digital economy in which your ability to adapt on-the-fly and make creative contributions will be your major resource.
- Creative Technologies and Enterprise

 The essential philosophy behind Creative Technologies and Enterprise is that it is a hybrid course aimed at hybrid students or transdisciplinary students, love that word. 
"It really is open to people with a mixed portfolio and I suppose the kind of student we're after are people who, firstly, feel very passionate about this area and can see the potential, but also, at the same time, are somewhat in-between: hybrid people who are in-between disciplines."  
- Professor Andrew Hugill, Director of Creative Technologies and Enterprise

 Therefore, as a research and enterprise degree, Creative Technologies and Enterprise is a masters option is going to supply me with the best of both worlds in regards to my larger focus. 

 Ultimately, the irony at the end of this is that I was offered the Creative Technologies and Enterprise Masters course first, as it is hosted by Bath Spa University, where I also did my BA (Hons), and it took me four months researching other course options before I found my way back to it! 

 However, at least I am now thoroughly sure that it is the best option - thank you, research!



 Preparing 2 undertake my Masters research project 


 My masters requires me to undertake my own research project and it is through this venture that I will have a hands on experience to develop my empirical research skills.
[The research project] will give students a practical understanding of the different methods of undertaking, disseminating, and presenting research projects in creative technologies, as well as practical experience in presenting their research to an audience. The [research project] module also aims to encourage students to think about how their own creative technologies work is best communicated to a range of different audiences, ranging from academics, industry specialists and the general public. 
- Creative Technologies and Enterprise course handbook
This is an element of the course I am hugely excited about, as I felt that this was something I could really get my teeth into when I was developing Ways of Being and I bemoaned the lack of empirical consideration in regards to film and media research concerns; especially so now that neuroscience offers the opportunity witness and correlate the physical cognitive processes within the brain - the potential of this for film and media research is truly vast!

I have briefly discussed one research project idea with the course directors, the idea for this research project can actually be found within Appendix B of Ways of Being:

Considering the monumental physical and financial presence they occupy, cinema snacks are surely another empirical and body-related area crying out to be studied. Aside from the disruptive noise these snacks produce, we have known for centuries that food can affect our moods and physiological state. Sugary snacks create opiate-like effects in the brain (Dailey, 2009) and fatty foods elevate our mood as well (Hurley, 2011); even more so when they are consumed in large quantitates, as all multiplex venues encourage. 

Cinema snacking could also be one of the variables that accounts for why general audiences tend to enjoy films that are otherwise critically panned, as Mark Kermode has commented: “No one enjoyed Pirates at the Carribean: At World’s End… some of them may claim to have enjoyed it. But they didn’t. Not really. They just think they did” (2011:65), or, rather, their stomach brains (in conjunction with their larger neurobiological networks) think they did. Beyond this speculation, it would be interesting to see how the film experience differs between audience members who eat snacks and audience members who do not.
- Ways of Being, 2013:113-14

Already the application of this research project would require and nurture skills that operate way beyond the most basic research skillset and considering my entrepreneurial interest in filmmaking and innovative public film exhibition, this project would also be hugely rewarded in bolstering the other areas of my experience and skillset.

However, this project is not the definite option and there are a couple of other potential options I have been considering, so we shall just have to see. 

With my Masters as a whole, I made it very clear to the course directors that whatever I do within the requirements of the course, those exercises absolutely had to build on the focuses I had initiated within my BA (Hons) and how I have further nurtured those since graduating.
It all has something to do with narratives.


Therefore, while my masters research project will not be concerned with the full breadth of the Ways 2 Interface focus, as it is currently too large to be explored within a measurable research project, the masters research project will, in some shape or form, deal with an aspect of Ways 2 Interface's concerns.

My masters research project will sit very snugly within the broad overview of the Ways 2 Interface research interest. To this end, the Ways 2 Interface platform will also act as masters research project log and will host the eventual result of that research project. 

The empirical research project and my masters as a whole is going to be a challenge, no doubt about that! I may have excelled at my BA (Hons), but the prospect of undertaking my masters still terrifies me, but that is why it is going to be so incredibly beneficial, because it will push me in a bold new direction.

 If you are not willing to fail, then you are not willing to succeed.

This is another reason for orchestrating Ways 2 Interface - intellectually, it has acted as a transition from the relative simplicity of my BA (Hons) to the more challenging prospects of my masters.

You could argue that Ways 2 Interface has not been too prolific in terms of its content up until this point, as there are only 4 posts previous to this one. 



However, these 4 posts combined come to just under 11,000 words, so already I have written a series of speculations that build on those of Ways of Being, that are themselves the equivalent length of another dissertation!

Additionally, the Ways 2 Interface research and considerations are not just comprised of what has been published on this blog, there are a number of semi-written posts that I have yet to finish and there is a whole plethora of additional research besides. 

 The research of Ways 2 Interface is not just what resides on this blog, it can be found in my other activities and is dispersed through the concerns of my larger research web.


 MOOCs and exploring 2 many research methodologies 


Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are not comparable to university degrees because they lack both the breadth and award acknowldegement of their real-world counterparts.
However, they are free to access, they do provide cohesive overviews of their respective subjects and they offer a very accessible step-by-step way into a subject, which is why so many universities are now making introduction/teaser MOOCs for their larger programs of study. 


 Like everything on the internet, a MOOC is just free advertising. 
In truth, all of the MOOCs I have already undertaken bear some relevance to this project, but the ones listed above have been of the most direct use; particularly, the research focused ones: Understanding Research Methods and Developing Your Research Project. Both of these MOOCs have done a better job of outlining and breaking down the research project process than the entirety of my undergraduate degree ever did! 


One hour per week - nice and easy!

Pretty much everything my research MOOCs have presented are research practices that I encountered or had to realise while I orchestrated the Ways of Being research project. However, this rehash has been invaluable, because it has enable me to go right back to the start to re-conceive the entire research project and planning process from an empirical viewpoint.

To this end, this biggest things I have taken from the MOOCs are their dealings or lack of dealings with research methodologies. I am not surprised that the MOOCs have shied away from outlining all of the different research methodologies, as there is a wide plethora of them to choose from and even then you might utilise a combination.

Research in Creative Technologies and Enterprise is inherently transdisciplinary, which creates particular challenges when considering appropriate methodologies. The course will explore these fully, looking at quantitative and qualitative methods, action research and other creative methods. 
- Creative Technologies and Enterprise 

No wonder my masters has an entire module devoted to research methodologies! I can see now that understanding the full range of methodologies out there is not going to happen, so I will continue as best I can with what time I have and then let my Masters fill in the gaps.

Quantitative and qualitative research methods - always a good place to start.

Ultimately, while all these MOOCs can never hope to equal the practice element of my masters, they have reconfigured my understanding, greatly nurtured Ways 2 Interface and set me up nicely for the commencement of my MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise.



 PhD? Ways 2 Interface above and beyond my Masters 

A PhD has been mentioned a number of times and the research concerns of Ways 2 Interface are something I could mould into a PhD focus somewhere down the line, but will I?

Probably not.

When I completed my BA (Hons), I expressed a very strong desire not to become a full-time academic. Academia is a sphere I find to be slightly too restrictively comfortable and this is one of the reasons why I did not immediately decide to do a Masters. 

I was already disillusioned with university when I first started in September, 2009 - I did not know what it was all about or see any future in my own academic focus - and it was one of the contributing factors as to why I nearly dropped out during my first year. However, when I did decide to see university through (albeit, on my own terms), I actively retained that sense of disillusionment throughout my time at university.

 As my high commendations will demonstrate, I did go on to find my feet in my university focus, but always with a slight unease and suspicion held towards the traditions of academia. Ultimately, I know this is one of the reasons I did so well out of my degree, because I actively disregarded a good deal of the retiring academic nature. 

 This aversion against complacency is something that very much comes out in the entirety of the Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle project, it's one of the main points of its concluding argument:
"if Film Studies is ever going to stand a chance of uncovering the meaning of the increasingly multifaceted relationship of the spectator and the spectacle, it will need to nurture progression and it must not be afraid to ask naïve questions. Children are very good at asking fundamental questions and a child-like curiosity is exactly what film theory requires"  
- Ways of Being, 2013:107

However, the major problem and financial con of degrees in the UK (I can't speak for the rest of the world) is that people only really take you seriously when you possess a Masters degree - many graduates have BA (Hons) and do nothing with them, but even less have Masters degrees, through which they are able to build their ideal career. 

 Therefore, this did provide another incentive to look into doing a Masters degree after graduating and it was only when I had had a proper look at all the potential options and settle on a part-time option that seemed to be uncannily built for what I was looking to gain from a  masters degree, that I decided to go ahead with my masters.

 I am undertaking my MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise because it will highyl benefit my professional development.

 Whereas, a PhD does not offer the same advantages; while there is a strong case to make a PhD out of the overall Ways 2 Interface focus, it's seem like an academic embellishment too far!
"If future income is a consideration, a PhD is worth little more than a master's. According to Bernard Casey, who published a study on the economic contribution of PhDs, male PhDs earn 26% more than those who could have gone to university but did not. However, men with a master's degree earn almost as much, with a 23% increase. For women, the difference is smaller still. Variations also exist within individual disciplines." 
- Daniel K. Sokol, Is a PhD the right option for you?

 However, if I were offered a fully-funded PhD, that I could undertake part-time and through which I could develop this research, then the likelihood of my accepting would be very high. 

 However, that is not likely to occur and a PhD is not the ultimate focus of my masterplan.

 My masters is not my ultimate focus.

 Even entrepreneurialism is not even my ultimate focus. 

 My ultimate goal is utilising my time on this earth to its absolute fullest potential! And, furthermore, to help others to do likewise!

 Leave time with a good story to tell - everyone!

 And a PhD would eat up a considerable amount of that time up, without producing any new potential - who cares if I am a Doctor and who the hell would call me Doctor?

Embarking on a PhD is a big decision. Not only will it consume three to five years of your life but, in some UK institutions, the failure rate exceeds 40%. During that time, the 'great work' (ie the thesis) will hover above the candidate like the sword of Damocles, even in moments of supposed rest. So when students say they are thinking of doing a PhD, I ask them why. 


As far as I am concerned, there is only one type of Doctor worth being and unless there is a PhD program out there that can promise me an adventure in space and time on the completion of my doctorate, I am really not interested.

But never say never, because you never know. All I know is if I ever did do a PhD, like everything else I do, it would be undertaken in a highly unconventional way.

However, I am not anti-academic, I am anti-full-time academic. 

I am going back to university to undertake my part-time masters, because I have been accepted on a highly innovative and pro-active course of study that will allow me to access a whole range of resources and opportunities that will enable me to autonomously nurture my professional creative entrepreneurial focus; in accordance with refining my research skills even further, while still being able to orchestrate additional projects on the side, because it's only part-time.

Ultimately, possessing a Masters degree will be a solid and clearly defined branded acknowledgement of all the time, research and effort I am putting into nurturing my own creative, research and enterprising pursuits.

As far as I am concerned becoming a master of my own destiny is academia enough!



 Ways 2 make your head not explode... 

When I undertook the research of Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, I uncovered something deep within myself - a fascination with our need to reflexively interface with content that we as a species exponentially create, for that is the story of human conciousness.

 In all the content on the interfaces all over the world we are seeing internal human conciousness played out on a real-world stage - decode it and who knows what that knowledge can do for the further development of humankind.

After my masters, maybe I will completely drop Ways 2 Interface, maybe I will find another use for it or maybe it will just become my hobby. I don't know and that is okay, because this project is all about figuring out my focus and mastering the researcher within myself. 

 I knew what it was from the get-go, what would be the point of conducting research?

Furthermore, if I do not take all of the interests inside my brain and lay them down into a coherent focus my head will probably explode!

We all have our parts to play and Ways 2 Interface is one part of my part.

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