RE: RE: [-empyre-] C. S. Peirce and Code

["Dirk Vekemans" <dv@vilt.net>]

On the 'conformism that dominates blog behaviour': this will be very old
ideas to many,so sorry if i'm stating the obvious here, but anyway:
i think it's rather the coding work behind the blog publishing apps that's
dominating the behaviour, and perhaps even the content and style of blog
writing. It's probably just a very temporary thing, just like early 'html
writing' was restricted to the writers knowledge or access to html writing,
nowadays most bloggers are extremely dependent on what a blog pub app allows
them to do easily, and of course most blog systems are commercial copies of
systems that are most succesfull, which doesn't make them necessarily the
best, to say the least.

An strict factual analysis of what a blog system actually does, stripping
the publishing(?) process of its metaphorical language like 'posting',
'archiving', 'permanent link', 'feed' etc. would show that while having a
seemingly rich potential for 'customisation'- changing your colour schemes
and all - , most blogs are in fact one trick ponies actually forcing people
to write bloggishly and style their blogs according to fashion and the rules
of what was once called 'usability'. Blogs thus promote categorical
writing/thinking and labeling with a rather obsessive addiction to what's
recent, that's not good or bad, its a fact, and what Friedrich labels
'commercial interest'in another code addition to these files, is the
inescapable process responsible for this outcome, not the people using it
(only in so far as they are co-responsible for that process). As much as we
would like to believe in the 'freedom' of the internet, code and digital
writing is essentially (also) a power game, a recursive process of Power
encoding itself, in a similar fashion as Derrida has analysed the justice
system as a system of power writing. 

Metaphor examples: 
"Posting": you don't post anything, you append an additional code object to
an existing file/(file based) database on a remote server or create a new
file for such an object.
"archive": you or the app doesn't store older files or file fragments in a
safer place, those metaphorical connotations are more of a euphemism for
'you can still read this old junk if you insist, you weirdo'
"permanent link, permalink": there's nothing (more) permanent about what the
link refers to, its a database query yielding only one code object as a
result as opposed to the queries in the 'Archive'
All of this makes up for a very thin layer of reassuring terminology on a
public database. Again, there's nothing bad about it, but it can be
revealing for a theoretical study of 'blog writing', even in a folksonomy
context.

In view of this its rather funny to see Microsoft gently (ever so gently)
move away from using obvious metaphors like 'Desktop'and 'My Documents'
because they are obstructions in their Extreme Programming schemes, while
the mass of users immediately turns to metaphorical language when given a
minimal editing control system to organise their writing on the internet.



dv@Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee


-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of fmadre@free.fr
Sent: maandag 17 oktober 2005 17:32
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: RE: [-empyre-] C. S. Peirce and Code

Selon Christine Goldbeck <cgoldie@verizon.net>:
> become published, can we use the new layering formats (spoken and 
> unspoken, seen and unseen codes)to change social and cultural 
> constructs? It's a question I wrestle daily ...

probably but this has yet to be proven
there are changes that happen within the online realm but are restricted to
there and very little evidence of actual social transformation that
crossover from on to offline

still, within cyberspace, or if we stick to blogs, there are a number of
things which can be done to erode the conformism that dominates blog
behavior, for instance I'd suggest to limit comments to blogs whose purpose
is to elicit reaction. I find that it is detrimental to certain types of
blogging that they are comment-enabled

it is also a real sadness for me that the advent of the totalitarian form of
online publishing which is the blog is effectively announcing the
disappearance of html or even, sigh, the link...

f.
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