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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04/02/18 07:08, Timothy Conway
Murray wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:D85C9DF8-2210-41F1-863C-4996DE9056CB@cornell.edu">
<pre wrap="">(it's cold and snowy but beautifully sunny in Ithaca, New York, today)</pre>
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cicadas & humid grey skies Waiheke Island, New Zealand, today.
2 boys killed in flashflooding in the Waitakere ranges, Auckland
cityside: the persistent promise of disruptive events that is now
our weather, now our environment. <br>
<br>
<<empyre>> ... I think of Altavista, the cathode ray
tube monitor and clicketty-clack keyboard, of the public computer
at Brazil cafe before I opened the doors most mornings dialing in
to engage with the textvoices coming down the wire early in the
2000s when I discovered the listserv, starting a blog as
clearinghouse, again public, winging it, butterflies waiting for
the next installment, about the same time: squarewhiteworld.com
... halcyon days / mornings of digital connectivity, when it
seemed to involve and devolve on actual and sometimes anxious
connections, rather than recognitions, reassurances and
reaffirmations of the lugubriously sincere (like-able if not
amiable) variety. When the wire ran hot with debate rains of
actual and sometimes burning butterflies. More popping bubbles
than cognitive ones. And I hazard that that's why I like the
listserv format still ... the possibility of an unforeseen
intervention upstarting, derailing more sanguine settled and yes
conservative (recuperative) discussion ... The risk of going too
far, the highwire, not preempted by the provision of
safetynetting. As for expertise and theoretical enterprise, was
more like a fleamarket, with barrackers, professional and
simulacral, in the softskinned space of egalitarian exchange, each
equally un-niched and in a context the construct of
all--permitting that is words of other unknown because unknowable
provenance (owing to textonly format): who does ____ think she is?
who will ____ be? before personological recidivism and
identitarian backlash of social online <i>presence</i>. There it
is: a virtual I have misspelt as "possibility"! <br>
<br>
...there would also be something to say about professional
overinvestment more recently actively soliciting recognition,
remediation, affirmations; rather than an increasing reign of
expert opinion, the soft sentimental professionally bleeding
heart's thin skin: so, rather than its lateral level and <i>smooth
</i>openness to both professional and expert, invited or lurking,
<<empyre>> might be lauded for the potential to engage
in ... risk. It could be a more dangerous place, this smooth one.
Reputations might, at least locally, be on line ... the long
hidden but fragile threads of glass that link us serving in
listserv the needling of consistency and consensus ... crawling
back into the cave of the screen after the fall ... grace<br>
<br>
taking a certain time to reflect in private vacuole of <i>that's
not what I meant at all </i>...<i><br>
<br>
</i>Best,<br>
Simon<br>
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