Recording disasters, personal or otherwise

Last night, I had the worst nightmare I've had in ages. Part of it involved some sort of supernatural disaster, some storm-to-end-all-storms Rapture, probably prompted by my listening to "Left Behind" on audiobook a couple of weeks ago. My first instinct in this incredibly realistic dream was to gape. Then, my next thought was, "I've gotta record this somehow, take a picture or get it on tape," which I imagine is what I would think in real life. After taking a picture or two, I began to realize that I shouldn't worry about recording it; I should worry about getting the fuck out of there.

But there's something to be said for the instinct to record disasters. Every time I see one of those reality videos of some disaster taking place, I think, "how can this person just STAND there?" or, if they are going to stand there, how can they have the poise to videotape it? How far ahead is that guy who sees the plane headed for the skyscraper and goes digging in his closet for his handicam thinking? Is he, on some level, imagining selling the rights to his video, is he thinking that this will prevent people from forgetting how horrible a tragedy this was, or is it all just some unconcious gut reaction (prompted by what?). After this dream, I'm beginning to think more about this instinct; it may not be that dumb after all. It may be closer to the instinct to survive (collectively and individually) than we'd imagine.

Maybe we record to learn how to prevent disaster in the future, to analyze what went wrong. But more than that, I think we want to record that which doesn't happen that often, that which is normally hard to see or hear or experience, and whether its incredibly good or incredibly bad doesn't even enter into it. Whether we watch it (or how many times we watch it) is another matter.

blog as column vs. blog as memoir

I'm still wading through my past, editing hundreds of pages and 10 years of journal entries into...something, maybe some early version of a memoir. These journal/blogs take on a new usefulness once they get big enough, b/c then you can search for things, words, emotions, people, movies, places, and see these patterns that you didn't know were there. I guess the data mining folks know this already, know that our identities are in these numbers and letters if you know how to find them. All I'm saying is its fun (if not unhealthily narcissistic, perhaps masturbatory) to mine your own data.

Blogs that are more like columns, more about other people's lives (heads of state, etc), or those that include links to other blogs or sites seem geared towards present-day usefulness. Not that they aren't of lasting value (what isn't?). But I guess I'm just partial to the ones that chronicle your everyday life.

Maybe I've gotten too wrapped up in recording my life to prevent my death. Maybe I shouldn't have done such a half-assed job of it for so long. I should just have sections of my life that go unchronicled. There's just something maddening about how fleeting a really great day is.

Internet as Feeder System for TV

Granted, this is a bit of a departure from my blog about blogs.

This is a follow up on an idea I was kicking around before - internet as a feeder system for TV. There's a website called Current TV that accepts uploaded digital video shorts, lets people vote, and allows the winners air time on a cable network launching in August. Its the model for a new system. Seriously, screw film festivals, and screw the TV studio system. It seems that if this takes off, 'focus groups' will be a thing of the past. This is a cheaper, more accurate way to guage public opinion on a show/film. Whether this suceeds or fails, it'll be worth keeping an eye on.

http://www.current.tv/studio/index.php

Maybe it'll be to TV what blogs are to legit news: it won't KILL TV, but TV producers would do well to watch what the "people" are saying, just as legit news writers would do well to keep an eye on blogs. Maybe video-blogs will catch on - somewhere between web-cams and reality TV. As long as yer skilled at editing and storytelling (which not many people are), then you've got something worth watching.

Then again, isn't this essentially what local cable-access is: a venue for the people to put there stuff on TV? And doesn't pretty much everything on local cable access suck?

Losing context

I'm sorry this is so boring. But I'm having trouble making it readable without spilling too much of my private guts. This is b/c I don't put the time and energy (nor do I possess the innate talent) to write something interesting that isn't intensly personal. Isn't that what blog-culture cultivates - this sloppy-but-salacious confessional mode of writing? I don't have anything against others doing this (other than the fact that eventually I tire of reading about who you have a crush on), but after taking this "Technologies of Identity" class, which deals primarily w/ privacy policy & online surveillance, I'm done spilling my guts.

"That compartmentalization (of identity) is both necessitated and made difficult by the user’s ignorance of the online context in which he performs. One never knows who else is present and ready to catch the online wink. There is no ability to assess or manage the context of revelation."

The key is that we're performing social interactions online that we performed for millions of years in the real world. In the real world, we could get feedback about where this info was going and what it would be used for. And its life was as long as people's memories (not very long). Digital recording also freaks me out in this respect. The connection between this context management and having a stable, secure sense of who you are isn't something that you're conscious of, but that doesn't mean its not there. If you really stop and think about how much of your identity is a performance, and how much that performance is altered by positive/negative feedback, you start to realize how much context/feedback matter.

But I refuse to be one of those paranoid souls who won't get his digital picture taken, nor will he have anything to do w/ the internet. Tons of people have taken the plunge into this confessional blogging world. I just think that the technology is so new that no one has really found an effective, efficient way to take advantage of it and use it for large scale slanderous purposes, but it wouldn't be surprising if they did soon. The groundwork is there - all this shit that used to have context doesn't anymore. The dangers of this are so subtle and abstract; hard to tell if they're even there. The danger is less in getting arrested and more in a vague alienation of friends or potential employers. It'd be so hard to track or prove. But interesting to think about.

Nothing really ends, and its all subject to revision

I'd estimate that nearly half of my existing journal is made up of "bitchy" entries, in which I complain about some emotional/mental/physical pain I'm in. I'd always regarded these entries as useful in their creation (they purge these thoughts, keep them from running around in circles in my head) but utterly useless reading material, the very definition of self-indulgence.

But now I'm starting to use them as a way of learning more about how I deal with shitty situations or how I've changed/not changed as a person. Sometimes I use them as guidance as to how to feel about something. How did I reacte to similar trouble 2 years back, 6 years back? Perhaps the most heartening aspect of looking back is realizing how utterly hopeless you were at one point, and how unwarranted that hopelessness was. Better days were on the way; you just didn't feel that they were.

I'm really interested in the ways that we impose narrative structures on our formless lives. I wonder if many people, now or ever, saw only the One Big Story - their own life, instead of the thousands of stories that I see my life as. Each time I'm in one, I feel that its THE story of my life, but it never ends up that way. I feel fortunate and somewhat immortal in this respect, as if I've been allowed to lead multiple lives, just out of curiousity. What could possibly bind that night camping on the mountain with my trip to Quebec City? At best, its a serial. Franzen was right; "the only real story, in the end, is that you die".

This is what I do when I go back and read those bitch sessions: locate my old self in a narrative, and identify w/ that old pre-comeback self, thus manufacturing hope for my current self. But I sound more detached from my life than I really am. Perhaps I aspire to be detached. I aspire to laugh (as a detached watcher would laugh) during the sad parts, but be deadly serious (pious, even) about the happy parts. That's the tone of my favorite authors/films, and that's the tone I wish to impose on my personal narrative.

(months later...)

After having watched the ending of 'Before Sunset,' I've a revision to make. We don't even live a full story. Even the snuffing out of my consciousness doesn't end what I think of as the plot of my life. In fact, its very unlikely that any of our deaths will coincide with any sense of closure. It'll probably be just like the end of this movie, just fading out while the narrative keeps going. It's maddening to consider this, but that's why I divide my life into many individual, overlapping stories - so I can get some closure. Its possible that my appetite for closure comes from watching/reading so many stories w/ beginnings and endings. Supposedly we spend more time in fictional universes, watching movies, reading novels, than anyone else in history, to correspond to the multiple lives we live (multiple marriages, multiple groups of friends, multiple "homes.")

Call me "gramps"

Just got involved in this new social networking site www.memetika.com. I'm glad to hear the word "meme" getting more mainstream use. But still, the site doesn't seem to do anything this site/friendster doesn't.

Searching the internet for someone who has the same interests as me just ain't cutting it. I guess its fun to know that most people who like the Sopranos don't like the Gilmore Girls, and that apparently no one has read or likes "The Moral Animal". I want some site that can connect me with someone who is thinking approximately what I'm thinking right...now! And we're not too far away from it.

But what then? Would I even want to talk to those people? I just never got into the whole chatting-w/-someone-you've-never-met-in-person. Could it really be that entertaining/pleasurable? God, I'm sounding like an old fogey, but seriously, I just want some sort of passive info (a movie, a book, an interview) or the physical presence of a conversation with someone. In other words, if I want info, I'll go to the pros, those who have studied making movies/writing/whatever and practiced it until they've become damn articulate. If I want social interaction, I'll talk to someone in person (hell, I don't even like phones all that much). I know in principle that the internet makes it easier to find like-minded people who would make better conversation-mates or, well, mates than we stumble across thru sheer chance in real life. I think with real life relationships, we have more incentive to meet people half-way, to alter our likes/dislikes. What we're after isn't someone similar to us necessarily. We're after people who care about us, and in real life, people adjust to those around them so that they can get/give this, so that they can be social.

These people who can lose themselves in the social fabric of the internet searching for someone more similar to them than those in close physical proximity - don't you think they'll end up with the same pleasures and problems as those who socialize w/o it? Perhaps I've been extrodinarily lucky in that I've found people offline whom I care deeply about, and those who are less lucky need online social networking. Or perhaps I'm just too damn old for this "internet" thing.

harumph

Ow + blogging as local news

Still a bit enervated from last night, but not so much that I don't remember a thought I had about blogs yesterday.

there was some sort of a brou-ha-ha outside the library on campus around noon. I'd heard something about a campus conservative group, Texas-shaped cake, and counter protests - sketchy details at best. I rubber-necked for a minute or two, but didn't really get any new info. There was some dude from the campus paper there, trying to get info for a piece in tomorrow's paper. The thing is: I wanted to know what the hell was going on right then, and just asking people, "hey, what's going on?" was going to get me a lot of shrugged shoulders. I've gotten this expectation from reading online papers like NYTimes or cable news networks to just get immediate news. But there's no reason for any huge establishment to give a shit about our campus doings. That's where blogs step in.

Blogger should have some sort of feature where you can search for people who have blogs in your geographic area and get a sense of what public opinion is about a certain local event. Definately more practical than asking some dude next to you "what's going on?" (though arguably more anti-social).

editing

Is the key to using blogs (or journals for that matter) to chronicle your life knowing how personal to get, how much of yourself you reveal? My mother told me that she has just finished writing her autobiography. If it were extremely personal, I don't think I would want to read it. Yet I would want it to be somewhat personal, or else it might just be very boring. You want there to be a voice, an opinionated voice, not just a record of events.

And I don't think I feel this way just b/c its my mother. I try to imagine what it would be like to read an autobio from someone living 150 years ago in Texas. If they went on about who they had a crush on, etc...well, maybe that would be interesting. Its not only sex life that has gotten left out of so much personal history over the centuries; its emotional life. So maybe you do want to leave in some of the personal stuff.

Ultimately, blogs are like any art, maybe even like any conversation you have - its not whether its personal or not that makes it of value. Its your ability to convey your conscious experience of life without being trapped inside your own head. All communication, like our consciousness, is editing - there are a billion experiences every instant. Our minds weed out the irrelevant information about the physical world (sound & light not audible/visible to humans). Artists/bloggers/conversationalists extend that process to their own experience, to the social world.

recycle 6 & self-deception

The idea of blogs or even journals as total confessional is illusory. The funny thing is - a person might be able to monitor you and your thoughts on your own desires and compare them to your actions and get an idea of how big of a self-deciever you are. I suppose this is how psychologists make a living. Its odd, but ultimately you may never be able to know yourself, or know the relationship your desires have with your actions, as well as others do.

Another funny thing - blogs as a substitute for shrinks. Sure, none of us have licences, and we'll give crappy advice, but this does share the openness and the ability for another to give advice from a position outside of your self. That's what drives this confessional instinct that bloggers and reality TV show contestants have. We confess to be corrected, to get away from our self-deception. Maybe I've been reading too much Foucault, but I really think blogging, confessing our thoughts and judging another's thoughts thru responses, could create new Norms different from those imposed on us by various institutions.

BUT power, including the power to survey, judge and establishing norms, ultimately coalesces in small groups. Our thoughts, the fodder of norms, are out here on the web, but who has the fricking time to go through them all. The future really is in information management. If there aren't "net-shrinks" lurking around livejournal and blogger.com, its only a matter of time.

I consider my journal to be a map of my consciousness and my actions, but not of my motives and desires. And that's what you'll never get thru this medium (unless it becomes heavily interactive) - any opportunity to call my bluff, to know what my motives and desires really are. More the reason to make this whole thing more interactive.

Blogs: Jumped the shark?

I was just rooting around in my parents' vinyl record collection. The funniest thing about those old records are the jackets, some of which have rediculously eclectic pictures of other albums on one side (Jim Nabors Sings the Lord's Prayer, Janis Joplin, The New York Philharmonic performing selections from 2001) and enthusiastic endorsements of the medium of vinyl record on the other: "Everybody's familiar with records, too...Every album is a show in itself...Everything is on record these days...This is not so with any other kind of recording"

But aren't we always overly enthusiastic about every new medium? Have I been this way about blogs?

I've found that I'm obsessed w/ finding out what's new. I was never a trendy person, but now that I'm supposedly making a career out of studying something that's constantly changing (media), I consider it my responsibility to know what tools are being used. And it would seem that tools are becoming more like trends - here today, gone tomorrow.

I'd bet that blogs are today's Freindster (or any other social networking site). Not that friendster went away, but the initial buzz has worn off. If you want to concern yerself w/ what's permanent and lasting on the internet, maybe you've gotta look at blogs, friendster, and their ancestor, the personal webpage (I still say HTML is for dorks ) as the same thing, serving the same function, w/ a little bit of the function of a message board or a chat room thrown in.

I still have faith in the internet as "feeder league" for creative mass communication (you hear that, editors of major publications? Notice me!). But seriously, its not like the existing form of finding writers/directors/etc is perfect or efficient. In fact, its pretty goddamn arbitrary. This is already happening w/ mashups - a couple of laptop DJs remixed some Brittany & Christina, produced good stuff, became word-of-mouth hits and ended up working for B & C.

The system of deciding what gets played or shown to mass audiences is based on physical proximity, chance encounters, nepotism and imperfect opinion polling. There are serious flaws in marketing surveys, and since this way of gathering data is based on the public's willingness to volunteer, there will always be significant biases towards certain opinions and certain people.

We know that everybody and their brother has a screenplay or is in a band that they think can conquer the world. With the internet, there's no reason a grass-roots darwinian entertainmosphere can't evolve which will either render marketing obsolete or so integral to the entertainment itself that you won't be able to detect it (whatever's after product placement). Members of the current system of entertainment marketing & advertising can't be blamed for trying to smear new technology as a mere breeding ground for illegal bootlegs - they're just trying to save their hides. For everyone who isn't in old-school marketing & advertising, this is a terrific opportunity to help built the more efficient system that replaces it.

BTW - the term "Entertainmosphere" - copyright 2005 goshdurnit. Yeah, yeah, some other jackass used this word on his/her blog, but he/she failed to copyright it! Violate my copyright and I swear I will CUT you!