Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Lost Email

Arther recollects the emails he sent and received on 9/11 but did not retain. It reminded me that I have lost or, recently, abandoned sets of email three times. The first was an error of cleaning up a hard drive, the second was turning off an intranet and the hird a deliberate closing of an account. Like this blog, each had thousands of notes and conversations from many, many people. As information it was great stuff, giving the ability to trace an argument over months, to track how a project developed but it was also a bit of a millstone focusing importance on the past as well as the flow and the source. It was authoritative but in relation frankly to mostly low grade content and gave too much weight to what was rather than was would be.

I don’t know why that resonates with the fact that I’ve come across an interesting couple of themes recently in that book I’ve been reading on the Anti-Federalists of 1787. Some of them thought two things were necessary for them to get their message across – anonymity and a free press. By anonymity they meant the ability to write under a pen name so that the readership would not be able to pre-judge through status. By a free press they meant one without commercial pressure from the Federalists, one where printers would print and distribute all pamphlets equally. In this way virtuous public opinion could be best generated:

Public opinion was even more crucial than it had been in any other republic. “In a confederated government of such extent as the United States” it was vital that “the freest communication of sentiment and information should be maintained.” Centinal envisaged the public sphere of the print as an important means of cementing a nation together. Print afforded a means of achieving social cohesion without a stron coercive authority.

Ratification proved the danger of allowing the press to become a tool of a party or faction: the suppression of Anti-Federalist writing facilitated ratification in a number of states. Centinal complained that “the liberties of that coutnytr are brought to an awful crisis,” for it was precisely the Federalists’ ability to dominate the press that allowed supporters of the Constitution to isolate and “overwhelm the enlightened opposition”…

I don’t know what the connection is between the emails of 2001, this blog and the press of 1787. This site has over 2000 posts and many more thousand comments. But I do not really treat it like an archive as I rarely recollect that I have written something before. It is also practically anonymous as I have met only a very few of you comment makers in real life. It is also one of millions making them as a group, like personal email repositories, practically inaccessible for any real purpose – so free and so available that they are unfunctional as tools for the advancement of ideas into the community for shared consideration and development. This is even the case of the so called A-listers – that notion spoken of in 2003 but not really much any more: people who thought they were important because of hit counts seemed to think that that would bring authority and a means to make change.

I will have to think about whether there is anything to this.

Slow

The internets are slow this morning as am I from an achy soccer-wracked corps. Why does the web slog sometimes so that my high-speed is like ice station #17 bad dial-up? Radio silence much of the day as we are off to the 3rd and 1st birthdays party of the neices.

I Un-♥ Day By Day

Below is the lastest strip in a web based cartoon called Day By Day which a bunch of bloggers post and which drives me nuts. Today’s is one of the worst examples but is illustrative of a number of points:

  • It derives its imagery in part from Doonesbury, the long running counter-culturish strip which started in the 60’s by Gary Trudeau, especially the quotes floating about the White House (not displayed in this strip but often a part of the daily dose.) It is indicative, however, that it is asserting itself as a response to Doonesbury with a rightist twist. For me if you are going to say something different, new and interesting, don’t coat tail – you are only reinforcing the fact that your idea is only a reaction.
  • It requires dumbing down to read it. The one below, like much neo-con a la Frum, requires a very conscious supression of known fact. This is based on the assertion one supposes that whatever the left is also supresses fact. But you have chosen to mimic that which you hate if you accept this. That is just sad.
  • In this particular installment, it requires you to reject specific awareness of the very well known facts of Watergate and Oliver Nort/Iran/Contra as conspiracies of the right, needing you to accept the concept that “the conspiracy” against Clinton is laughable. This requires the abdication of personal responsbility for determining relevance through inviting you down the path of collective unawareness to get the joke – rather than considering all of recent history. Again, the argument may be that the left does the same thing but that is the “we are no better than X so like us better than X” argument: aka nonsense.
  • The characters are interchangible, reflect one point of view and are unconnected to any personal existence other than the expression of the point of view. Without storylines, it is a shallow cartoon regardless of the quality of its political content.
  • It flows these points through a non-existant group: hip diverse young right-wing folk who are attractive, witty and all sexificated. Everyone know that all young political types of any point of view are not like this, although they perceive themselves to be through their self-association with power. My own experiment with policial humour here is teaching me the lameness of the medium because, as we all know, they who like political humour are, in fact, more like the characters in Dilbert. I would actually be happy if someone would mirror Day By Day with the comments interposed over the characters from Dilbert. That would be entertaining.

So to like Day By Day, in order for you to “get it,” you have to be unaware of historical fact, willing to supress known fact, jealous of the success of the strip being mirrored, somewhat unfunny to begin with, and needy in relation to self-image. Who wants to fit themselves into that definition? Like Canadian conservatives and Stephen Harper, I am sure they can do better.

BBC Broadcasts First To Web

Sometimes new things actually do happen on the internet:

BBC Three is to premiere comedy series The Mighty Boosh on the internet before it is broadcast on television. The second series of the show will premiere via broadband from 19 July – a week before it is shown on television.

Seven years or so ago all the talk was convergence. All we got were podcasts. Maybe the BBC, which is doing its best to define the internet as much as pr0n has, is on to something.