[-empyre-] dealing with media

[Alan Sondheim]

Most email lists don't allow attachments; they're set up for text 
communication. Since I've been guest moderating this month, there's only 
one message that was blocked, and it was spam. It's easy to put up urls of 
images, etc. I'm on a number of successful email lists (and run two of 
them) and there's been no problem at all.

Lists have their own trajectories, however; Jon Marshall, an anthro- 
pologist on Cybermind, wrote an account of Cybermind, Living on Cybermind, 
one of the lists I co-moderate; it might give you a better understanding 
of their phenomenology.

Most lists I'm on are based on discussion in depth, including empyre of 
course; it's one of the few places online that in-depth analysis can 
occur, outside of blogs, and blogs are clumsy in a sense; with email 
lists, the posts/discussions come to you.

Finally, empyre's been wildly successful; the experiment this time was, 
among other things, to open up the discussion to everyone, without guest 
presenters. ...

Thanks, Alan


On Thu, 23 Mar 2017, csaper at umbc.edu wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> Simon
>
> Why is the conversation here ?far and few? you ask? Perhaps because the 
> message does not (only) reach its intended destination. Perhaps it 
> reaches no one. This list blocks all of my posts with attached pictures, 
> sound files, and and detournment (perhaps because that breaks the 
> constraints and protocols of the list).
>
> Far and few between each post is almost nostalgic in its epistolary 
> model of communication. Here I am writing to you ? addressed to you by 
> name // and the others (unknown to me) are functioning like surveillance 
> (silent auditors who may never read these posts ? who can keep up with 
> the overflow ? not even the NSA). And, I imagine someone reading the 
> posts and archiving and organizing them. Unknown to the senders.
>
> For more than a decade I had no TV, only emergent-internet (The Well ? 
> who here was on that precursor of the internet?) and dial-up service 
> (for 2 decades), and no cell phone (for 5 decades). Phone machines (a 
> radical innovation) and letters with the copy shop and coffee house 
> essential to the archive. Mailings were everything (see my Networked Art 
> ? for how robust those networks were). We had video machines, networks, 
> and electronic music/media. It just was not tagged, mined, and 
> surveilled successfully.
>
> This list may be preparing us for a past as prologue. To avoid both 
> monolithic spectacle, and a return to the other forms of e-say writing ?
>
> C
>
>
>
> On Mar 23, 2017, at 12:03 AM, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Psychologically, how do we deal with this -
>
> FBI has information indicating Trump associates communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate release of information damaging to Clinton campaign, officials told CNN. [www.cnn.com]
>
> Or this -
>
> https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/information-war-begun/2017/03/22
>
> And how can we involve empyre subscribers in the discussion?
>
> I appreciate everyone who has contributed to this discussion on
> empyre. But I wonder why, when discussions - noisy and often
> off-track - on Facebook, can continue with high-speed ferocity for
> a seemingly endless amount of time / number of posts - where here,
> where there's opportunity for reflection (admittedly without the
> cleverness and grandstanding), posts are far and few between?
>
> Comments appreciated!
>
> - Alan, thanks -
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

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