[-empyre-] On Choices between WIki & Blog

[Lichty, Patrick]

This was mentioned, and I thought that a response was in order.

In regards to my choice to implement my chapter as a Wiki instead of a blog, I'd like to mention a conversation I had with Curator/'Critic Ed halter in NYC this weekend.  He had mentioned that my chapter in Christiane Paul's book on curating new media was the only one to even mention blogs as a curatorial model, to which I replied that he was correct in stating that the essays were three years old by the time they got to the printing press - an eternity in New Media time.  We both remarked about the rapid evolution of culture models of the present, which bring sme to my chapter.

I'll take a minor risk in saying that my chapter was proposed as neither Wiki or Blog, but as a lexial essay using a hyperbolic browser, index clouds, etc. This was dropped ostensibly in that it woudl have been too difficult to implement as the site stands, and woudl not fit the form of the project.  This is not that important, but the choice of Wiki vs. blog is to me.

I chiose the Wiki, and I talk abotu it slightly in my essay, as it has a very different discursive space than a blog. One is a call and response, and the other risks the loss of controll of collectivism.  This, in my opinion, is the central point of working in user -editable cultural production - there is a loss of control and a network of trust at the communtiy scale.  The risk of indeterminacy versus surrender to networks of trust is a precarious position, but I feel it is a necessary experiment in the age of social media.  Although the filtering of the audience is defined by interest in the subject, I still had to relinquish control of the essay to the community.  There's no way of predicting what it will look like in a year.  I find this exciting, and it represents a media-as-metaphor representation of the subject at hand.

I hope that the readership appreciates this experiment, and will choose to become part of my discursive data stream.