Re: [-empyre-] video killed the radio star

[Liza Sabater <blogdiva@culturekitchen.com>]

On Jun 15 2005, at 05:40 PM, Chris Ashley wrote:

> --- marcus bastos <bastos.marcus@gmail.com> wrote:
> > the thin line that separates public and private in
> > cyberspace? Doesn´t
> > blog culture seems to be related with these broader
> > tendencies, that
> > is, a larger culture of using the web as a tool for
> > periodic
> > publishing, but also as a tool for publishing
> > material that would
> > probably be discarded or reformated in a different
> > context?
>
> Yes, that's true.  That's a nice way of saying it.
> One could also say, "Weblogs are a great way to post
> all kinds of crap."  And there must be value in there
> somewhere, but it's a lot to sift through.  I think if
> something needs a home the producer is going to find a
> place for it, weblog or not.  So an artist or writer
> or musician is going to find ways to distribute their
> work.  Weblogs have made that a little easier since
> the barriers for entry are so low- you can have your
> weblog hosted for you, you don't need to know any
> HTML, really, you don't need permission, you own it,
> and you can start them and leave them as needed.

I'd like to expand a bit on this because it seems thought that people 
like the EMPYRE bunch is confusing the practices of blogging with the 
technologies.

Blogs actually are fantastic archival tools. A blog does not compare in 
archiving and googability to a static site, needless to say to those 
Flash-based abominations called dynamic sites. And I do say they are 
better than listserves for managing and archiving many different 
conversations at once.

There are different degrees of robustness to blogs, which are basically 
content management systems in their most basic form. It does not mean 
you need to use a blog just for content, but content is data and, well, 
it is far better to have a CMS than a static site. So Kominio's comment 
that Chris could just as easily slap his stuff on a web page shows a 
lack of comprehension on what this technology is meant to do.

The range of blog technology is very wide. It really goes beyond 
MovableType and Blogger. You can get fully archived threaded 
discussions a la Slashdot with Scoop, Drupal and even MT, WordPress, 
b2evolution and Textpattern with the use of a couple of plug-ins and 
some CSS. Depending on how you want to use it as a point of movement 
for you thorugh the internet, a blog can turn from just a tool for 
publishing into a social networking hub.

MailLists, unless managed through a blogging interface, just can't do 
that, because MailMan is also more of a private technology and 
mailinglists work more like "cliques" as opposed to blogs which are 
more like "public squares". I am using these metaphors to describe the 
technology, NOT the practices.

Quick tought about the practices : archiving as accumulation, 
hyperlinking as fugue and rhyzome, non-linearity and ellipsis; just to 
throw out there a few.  When thinking of blogs from the POV of 
aesthetics, we need to think of the neo-baroque.

What I love about Chris's squares is that they are like poetry verses 
of a poem that does not seem to have an end. They're very much an 
expression of Fernando Pessoas "ser-se" of being being. Blogs can be a 
technology used for unfolding being being. That's why I'm so enthralled 
with how people like linkoln and, jimpunk and chris use it.


Liza Sabater
Blog Publisher
www.culturekitchen.com

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater