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

[Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au>]

around the 18/10/05 fmadre@free.fr mentioned about Re: [-empyre-] C. 
S. Peirce and Code that:
> so, what you are saying is that as long as your blog is being linked to it is
> not ending. what i'm saying is that when you stop posting to it then it has
> ended. we are obviously not talking about the same thing.

Well, I think we are :-) To me in a networked ecology, just like the 
ecology out 'there', there aren't ends (a student said to me, when I 
proposed this, that when you died it was an end, I replied with 
asking what he thought happened to his body after he died, and he 
acknowledged that it was only an 'end' from a particular minor 
perspective).

> would you say that for instance "war an peace" doesn't have a 
> beginning  because
> people quote from it (from somewhere in the "middle" of it) and no end because
> people are still mentioning it ? I would not.

Either would I, which is why War and Piece isn't a hypertext.

> still if I accept your definition of begin/end then what you mention is not
> specific to blogs, it is an inherent characteristic of the web that our online
> pieces are zapped thru rather than experienced from elusive start to
> hypothetical finish

yes. Though many struggle with this very simple idea, and what I 
*like* about blogs is that they have a) recognised this, b) accepted 
it, c) figured out a medium that accommodates it.

There are a surprising number of web developers, and even more 
content owners, who think that a) all traffic is via the front page, 
b) readers don't deep link, c) put in place systems that police this 
(frames anyone?).

[snip]
> >  Blogs are emergent ecologies that rely on links. Links are the
> >  fundamental transaction. (See Weinberger, Walker, Tosca, and myself
> >  for stuff on this.) They are an excess (in Bataille's sense of a
> >  general economy) that blogs celebrate, even when business is busy
> >  trying to appropriate them (but as an excess this will always only be
> >  partial). They are porous to the network in ways that most other
> >  writing to the web, certainly everyday popular writing, never
> >  achieved.
>
> they are only porous to the blogosphere, very closed and small circles always
> retraced

No, they can be porous to all the network, it is only that blogs have 
lead the way with a viable technical methodology for realising this. 
There is no reason why other pages can't do the same thing.

I'm unsure at what point small circles became a criticism, I would 
apply this term to every major innovative movement/discipline at its 
inception. yes, in blogs there are a multitude of small circles, this 
has strengths and weaknesses, but I'm unclear why, in itself, this is 
something that is negative?

> Every current system of authority in blogging (as far as I
> >  know), relies on links in to determine authority. I cannot write
> >  links in. I am subject to the network for that.
>
> it's so perversely simple to get those links in and that is the burden of "the
> blog".

Only if you aspire to be an A list blogger. Many do, I believe many 
want to be pop music stars, film stars, celebrity directors, and to 
write best sellers. It does not follow that all music, cinema, and 
literature is therefore mediocre, or populist. There are thousands, 
if not millions, of excellent blogs that are highly specialised in 
tone and content. They will only ever have a minor audience, just 
like specialist journals. This is their strength, and these do not 
aspire to be join manytomany.

(This is something journalists still dont' get. The first question is 
always, how many readers are there. This is the old media question 
which was always about maximisation of audience, that's why it is 
*mass* media. Blogs are minor media, yes they're being colonised by 
mass media, just as Cervantes and Austen have ended up with 'airport 
fiction', but all of the real action in blogs happens in the long 
tail, it's just that all of us are still acculturated to older 
industrial forms of media production and consumption and so the idea 
of the minor text with an audience of 10 slips past...)

> >  This is exciting and novel. It is emergent,
>
> it's at least 6 years old and I got bored 3 years ago.

<cheek on>


Yes, of course, but at what point did your boredom become the index 
of value? And if that is the case what particular economy of novelty 
is being proposed, and how is that different to other mercantile 
forms of contemporary novelty?

</cheek off>
--
cheers
Adrian Miles
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