Re: [-empyre-] Blogs (and a bit of Peirce)

[marcus bastos <bastos.marcus@gmail.com>]

Dear Adrian,

I changed the subject of the coversation, to make it easy for people
to find the topics discussed this month, when researching at the
online archive.

You said:
"To me in a networked ecology, just like the ecology out 'there',
there aren't ends"

I agree with that, but what bothers me about blogs is how their linear
interface does not let the user immediately understand this networked
ecology.

I´ll take this opportunity to post one of my favorite digital texts,
TextArch reading Hamlet, http://www.textarc.org/Hamlet2.html. The
fascinating about this project is how he blurs the idea of linear, as
opposed to non-linear texts, simply by making several assocations not
esaily perceptible on the printed version of Hamlet visible, by
programming the interface to do higlight and outline them, as the
reading of Hamlet happens. (This is especially true when the
"association list" is active)

This example can also be related to the ongoing discussion on Peirce
and Code, and the idea of "pattern flows" (despite the fact that this
project is more analytic than generative). The "TextArch reading
Hamlet" interface is a nice illustrations of the associative (spatial)
component embedded in texts, as opposed to their mostly time-based
organization. Refering to the previous posts -- when it was said that
for semiotics, visual and verbal are never separate from one and
another (wich also means that they always interefere in each other)
--, it could be argued that the the visual aspect of blogs hides this
kind of associations, while this interface makes them visible.



On 10/21/05, Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au> wrote:
> 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
> this email is [ ] bloggable [ ] ask first [ ] private
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