Time for a Midnight Dip

"Now my mind works more than my eyes do. My senses no longer act, only my mind."

--Jean Baudrillard



[Relevant Link: http://snurl.com/kb3uu]

The Power of the Collective Communication Experience

To keep today's theme going, please enjoy this video clip from Fora.Tv that addresses the aggregate power of web-based communicators, i.e. that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Paradigm Shift: The User-Generated, Real-Time Web



[Relevant Link: http://gestalttheory.net/]

Chasing Rabbits: Had to Do It

"What the internet does—it empowers individuals. It takes away the power of mediating institutions and puts all in the hands of people and that, in many ways, is a logical outgrowth of the philosophy and the ideals of the hippie movement."

--Steve Gillon



[Relevant Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog]

Twippies: Feed Your Head

So, I have to participate in an online discussion forum that operates in conjunction with my thesis class. Each week two students are responsible for posting discussion questions and the rest of us have to debate their topics.

Yesterday, one of my classmates asked if social networking websites have gone too far, i.e. have they grown unruly and made a mess of things? Specifically, they called out Twitter and chided our "trusted" news providers for jumping on the bandwagon. This student's post implied that Twitter has degraded the overall quality of information available to society. It also blamed tweeters for bringing chaos into the system. What line—they asked—should we draw? Where should we put up boundaries and barriers?

That answer is simple—nowhere and none. Here's my response:

I think Twitter is a great website. Micro-blogging is the natural step in the evolution of the scanner culture, i.e. we do not read everything that comes our way—we scan the internet for something that piques or interest/ curiosity.

I know that some people lament that fact, as if it's an indication that society is becoming illiterate to some extent or another, but I completely disagree.

We have to remember that personal computing has its roots in the counter-culture of the 1960's and the echoes of that revolutionary mindset.

As Steve Wozniak said in a History Channel documentary about Hippies:

"We were so influenced by the People’s Computer Company in Menlo Park—the same area that the Hippie thought had come from. The whole Hippie thinking was that, basically, the big, wealthy power structure should be undone. We want to turn the balance over; and we want to make the small individuals more important. And it was basically bringing this power—this mastery of their own universe—away from the powers that be—the huge, big rich corporations."

John Markoff's book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry takes a more in-depth look at the confluence of technology and counter-culture.

Prior to these movements, information had always been under tight control; there was an aristocracy of knowledge determining what was and was not worth learning. Unfortunately, this informational caste system did more to divide society and empower those at the top, than it did to liberate those at the bottom.

However, now consumers are dictating the terms of consumption. A website like Twitter forces "publishers" to make their pitch in 140 characters or less, which means if you cannot grab someone's attention than you do not get it. After all, why should we read everything a person or organization prints/ publishes just because they have a prominent name like the New York Times?

More importantly, it gives people at the bottom a voice. Who cares if they're tweeting about what kind of cereal they ate for breakfast? That may seem inane to us, but it allows them to feel like they're part of the dialogue. They're speaking; they're contributing; they're finding an outlet for self-expression and—possibly—finding like-minded people to communicate with, which, in the past, was very unlikely to happen.

Social Networking Websites are the first real democratic arena of expression that the world has seen. So, not only do I not think that they have gone too far, but I also think that they have not gone far enough in reshaping communication models.

I do not think that there should be any lines drawn up by an institution or organization since that would just be a reversion to the gatekeeping models of the past. Users should be free to draw their own lines.

As far as news outlets joining Twitter, I say good for them. I think it's long overdue; it's great to see news providers actively engaging the population through channels like Twitter and interactive blogs.

[Relevant Link: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=716&doc_id=166535]

Postmodernism as the Agent of the Avant-Garde

The Post Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
by Jean Francois Lyotard

Jean-Francois Lyotard writes:
In an amazing acceleration, the generations precipitate themselves. A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.
(p. 79)

My interpretation:
Modernism does not stand still. It changes; it undergoes a process. For the sake of clarity, it will help to begin describing the process in the second of three stages—the conventional. This is the accepted standard of modernity—the status quo. However, convention is over-replicated. It becomes a simulacrum of itself and, subsequently, vapid.

The withering of the conventional always inspires invention. The antagonistic nature of discourse promotes constant revival. The stale must be made fresh. The conventional is attacked.

This period of the avant-garde constitutes the postmodern. It is the power that disrupts and redistributes discourse into new games. These disruptions form the beginnings (not the end) of the next stage of modernism which, in turn, will wither and incite further renewal; hence the declaration that "the generations precipitate themselves."

That is also why a work must enter the world as the postmodern before becoming the modern—invention, convention, and disintegration.

[Relevant Link: http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/Lyotard.htm]

The Cinematic Oracle

See this movie.



"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."

--Wittgenstein

[Relevant Link: http://examinedlifejournal.com/index.shtml]