[-empyre-] -empyre- a digital unconscious?

Simon SWHTaylor at zoho.com
Sun Feb 4 14:10:05 AEDT 2018


On 04/02/18 07:08, Timothy Conway Murray wrote:
> (it's cold and snowy but beautifully sunny in Ithaca, New York, today)
cicadas & humid grey skies Waiheke Island, New Zealand, today. 2 boys 
killed in flashflooding in the Waitakere ranges, Auckland cityside: the 
persistent promise of disruptive events that is now our weather, now our 
environment.

<<empyre>> ... I think of Altavista, the cathode ray tube monitor and 
clicketty-clack keyboard, of the public computer at Brazil cafe before I 
opened the doors most mornings dialing in to engage with the textvoices 
coming down the wire early in the 2000s when I discovered the listserv, 
starting a blog as clearinghouse, again public, winging it, butterflies 
waiting for the next installment, about the same time: 
squarewhiteworld.com ... halcyon days / mornings of digital 
connectivity, when it seemed to involve and devolve on actual and 
sometimes anxious connections, rather than recognitions, reassurances 
and reaffirmations of the lugubriously sincere (like-able if not 
amiable) variety. When the wire ran hot with debate rains of actual and 
sometimes burning butterflies. More popping bubbles than cognitive ones. 
And I hazard that that's why I like the listserv format still ... the 
possibility of an unforeseen intervention upstarting, derailing more 
sanguine settled and yes conservative (recuperative) discussion ... The 
risk of going too far, the highwire, not preempted by the provision of 
safetynetting. As for expertise and theoretical enterprise, was more 
like a fleamarket, with barrackers, professional and simulacral, in the 
softskinned space of egalitarian exchange, each equally un-niched and in 
a context the construct of all--permitting that is words of other 
unknown because unknowable provenance (owing to textonly format): who 
does ____ think she is? who will ____ be? before personological 
recidivism and identitarian backlash of social online /presence/. There 
it is: a virtual I have misspelt as "possibility"!

...there would also be something to say about professional 
overinvestment more recently actively soliciting recognition, 
remediation, affirmations; rather than an increasing reign of expert 
opinion, the soft sentimental professionally bleeding heart's thin skin: 
so, rather than its lateral level and /smooth /openness to both 
professional and expert, invited or lurking, <<empyre>> might be lauded 
for the potential to engage in ... risk. It could be a more dangerous 
place, this smooth one. Reputations might, at least locally, be on line 
... the long hidden but fragile threads of glass that link us serving in 
listserv the needling of consistency and consensus ... crawling back 
into the cave of the screen after the fall ... grace

taking a certain time to reflect in private vacuole of /that's not what 
I meant at all /.../

/Best,
Simon


/

/






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