Blogs as conversation and lasting art

After reading some of my students' blog entries about blogs they had read, I was reminded about something intriguing about blogs in general: they're ambiguous status as personal conversation/confessional OR as a lasting statement about life, akin to a novel. Granted, most blogs are of the former kind - gut-spilling for the benefit of a select few (usually real-world friends), but I like the fact that there could be profound writing hidden among these entries, and that they are not explicitly marked as "literature" or "art." It could be one particularly interesting, well-written entry in an otherwise self-indulgent confessional blog - great writing is great writing, and to me, its almost "greater" or perhaps somehow more authentic when its not in a published anthology or in a well-known novel. Its the ambiguous status of personal blogs that keeps the blogosphere interesting to me. For this reason, I hope that people don't just see blogs as a way to refer people to interesting news sites on CNN.

Today's desperate artist's only choice: to masquerade as Truth.

Systematic, prolonged deception is not only possible on the Internet, but it has become increasingly easy and inexpensive. Every single one of the blogs on this site or any other site could have originated from a single source or a souce that holds the opposite opinions of those expressed in the posts. Like message boards, online video distributors (e.g. YouTube), and pretty much every other participatory website, this site allows a single user to impersonate any number or variety of other people.

We can be reasonably sure the news we receive on the web is real, NYTimes, CNN, and all the rest being longstanding, reliable sources with a lot to lose if their reputation is besmirched. The Internet as news source is not what’s at stake, but rather the Internet as a social space. You can “triangulate” the truth by looking at many different website’s accounts of a news event. You cannot do this with the intimate lives or opinions of individuals. There are plenty of old fogies who do not use the Internet as a social space who would like to dismiss identity play as unimportant merely b/c it doesn’t effect them or anyone they know. But last time I checked, there were millions of young people all over the world using the Internet as a social space.

It may not take much $ to deceive people on the Internet, but it takes time and creativity, both in short supply for most. You’ve got to have something to sell to make it worth the time, unless you’re just trying to prove a point. It is this apparently motiveless mass deception that is the true new art form that lonelygirl15 portends. Think of it as experimental theater, as the next big step in the erosion of the barrier between art and life.

For those who continue to doubt the relevance of this, consider the obvious political implications of phony personas. If personas are easier to fake, then the grassroots democratic nature of the Internet could be partially or completely illusory.

Normally, I wouldn't quote something at great length, but this post is buried amongst others:

emjo on NYTimes Screens blog:
"Rewind to the 17th century, and the birth of the novel in the Christian west. In its early manifestations, the form relied on the popular convention of make-believe truthfulness — “found” Arabic manuscripts in Don Quixote, “discovered” correspondences between dead lovers in any number of epistolary novels, and so on. Back then, fiction was lies, and lies were immoral — but everyone new these books weren’t really the real truth. It was originally perhaps a symbolic, but obligatory, nod to the atmosphere of religious censorship, plus there is that extra shivery bit of pleasure from imagining that a story MIGHT be true. See also more contemporary examples — Nabokov’s “Lolita,” for example. Enter reality T.V., and, shortly after, literary identity scandals like James Frey and J.T. LeRoy. This is a little bit different–the assumption is that audiences will be more interested (will perhaps ONLY be interested) if they REALLY BELIEVE that the stories they’re hearing/seeing are true...[For those who doubt the revelance of LG15 and the like], do we really not care anymore about anything but the material facts of our world–particularly those facts that put us in bodily danger? Is imagination a waste of time? Is fiction immoral?

Maybe on our journey back towards the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, we are finding new ways to push art to the margins. Global terrorism, by god! We have no time to waste on childish make-believe! I can understand how artists desperate to get our attention might feel that their only choice is to masquerade as Truth. Unfortunately, this compromise is dangerous and demeaning. So what to do? Do the narrative arts continue to become more polarized — either popular, soothing, and meaningless, or powerful, brilliant, and obscure? Do more and more theater, film, and fiction artists turn to fake reality? Or do we as audiences give the imagination the space it deserves, to interpret and represent aspects of experience that can’t be fought with wars and bombs?"

http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=77#comment-935
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17zeller.html?ref=weekinreview

Fake Blogs, Fake Vlogs, and Verisimilitude

More on Lonleygirl15...

Many artists aspire to create the most realistic art they can. Many see the arts on a steady tragectory towards art that is indistinguishable from reality. So, is Lonelygirl15 and other blogs or vlogs that are fictional the next step towards verisimilitude? Do those who fee lied to have any more of an ethical beef than people who were originally tricked into believing early films were "real?" As I recall, Lonelygirl15's creators never explicitly claimed to be non-fiction. They simply took advantage of an audience's preconceived notions of a medium.

the birth of a new art form

call me crazy, but I believe "The Creators" when, after the (apparent) revelation that Lonleygirl15 is not "real," they declared the birth of a new art form. In terms of medium specificity, I think they have a point (although its dopey to think of the Internet as a single medium at this point, as it fulfills so many different fuctions for so many different people) - one of the walls that the internet was destined to break down, along with the walls between public/private and public/celebrity, was the wall between fiction and realtiy.

I guess you could draw parellels to "War of Worlds" or "Quiz Show," mass media deceptions on a much larger scale. Like everything online, this only affects a minute portion of the public. But still, the same principles apply. And so we might think that, just as War of the Worlds was to radio and the quiz show that inspire the movie Quiz Show was to TV, this is to the Internet (or at least autobiographic blogging, vlogging, and podcasting). In other words, there comes a time in the evolution of any medium where the audience is forced to confront the fact that the medium can be used for mass deception. They are forced to become critical of it. Again, this only applies to aspects of the Internet (primarily those that ape aspects of "traditional media" like YouTube does to TV. But the same can be said about autobiographic blogs.

loneleygirl15 is real in the sense that the person who is on screen is almost certainly real, and she is real in the sense that the sentiments that she expresses, the motives that inform those sentiments, are both from another real person (or perhaps several real people) - the Creators. It is possible that The Creators is just a computer program that analyzes autobiographic blogs, pulls recurring themes, sentiments, and motives and weaves those into a story (unlikely considering how unsophisticated AI is rright now, but in principle, such a program, with minor human assistance, could exist soon).

Is lonelygirl15 any less real than the coached personalities on Laguna Beach? What if those personalities weren't coached? Would that, then, be real? By "real," I suppose we mean that the actions of a person are motivated by only them, and not other forces, or that at least those other forces pass through the filter of that person. It would be better if Bree was "real" in the sense that she, like the characters on Laguna Beach and the Hills, had a pre-existing life that was dicovered by producers and then shaped to suit dramatic needs. There could never be any definitive unmasking. There would never really be any lying. It would be impossible to fix the line between reality and fiction. They (or she) might have been coached, and her behavior might have been altered, but it is impossible to say to what degree and in what way.

We all put on some sort of a performance to garner attention, in our writings and our behavior. What makes us real?

So this is all some combination of Andy Kaufman and Andy Warhol. And at least for now, it feels new.

My Death Space cont

So I guess they do have murderers and suicides on this site. The random deaths (e.g., car crash) are interesting at first, sort of poignant. But this is different.

I can't imagine that this will last. Do family members of the victims/suicides have any recourse? Can they tell myspace.com to take the site down, or do they just not want to do that? I feel like a huge chunk of the private world just became public. This happened long ago to sex, in some incomplete way. Ultimately, the motives of murderers and suicides (along with sex) were always accessible, but it was difficult to get to that information, so the Internet just makes it considerably easier, and that makes more people give in to that curiousity and that makes it more acceptable.

So I guess I'm filtering through these murderers and suicides, playing amatuer psychologist, but feeling somehow guilty about it. Is it rubbernecking?

blogging and death

http://www.myspace.com/aznsilkyboxers69

www.mydeathspace.com

I'd thought a bit about journals or blogs or social networking profiles like MySpace as something that would live on after you die, but in sort of an abstract way, but now, thru mydeathspace, I've found entries from people who have died.

In a way, a blog becomes more important after you die. While you're alive, you can modify people's judgment of who you are by replying to comments or by meeting them in person. But once you die, all of that blog (or journal or myspace page) is you. You can't supplement it or contradict it.

The people who really loved you probably don't care that much about your blog. Perthaps it would just be casual acquaintances who would go to your myspace page after your death, or strangers. The whole point of blogging and myspace seems to be social networking, and so they become pointless in death, or become repurposed.

There are blogs by people who committed suicide, probably blogs by those who commit murder. If (god forbid) someone committed many murders (a la Columbine), I can only assume the police would take down that person's blog. Would that be the "right" thing to do, and if not, is that out of respect for the people that died? If that's the case, then why leave up the blog of a suicide, or someone who died in some other way?

Its very easy to say, "of course a murderer's blog should be taken down out of respect for the victims. Don't be sick!" But does the murderer gain anything by having the blog up there? Do we, the public, lose anything by not having it up there? I remember when blogs first started out, thinking that this would be the ultimate tool for learning about a large number of people, how they felt, how they thought. Soon afterwards, I discovered how banal so many people (including myself) were. If blogs are a way of learning about human nature and behavior, doesn't it make sense to keep the liminal people's blogs intact and public? Would you prefer they just be viewed by the police?

If you're going to be offended by the presense of a blog, I would think it would be these blogs that stay up after people die, rather than the ones that stay up after a person commits murder.

Being overly ironic in one's blog or myspace page seems like a bad move if only for this reason. It can all be a joke while you're alive, but if you die, it can become the only facet of you that lives on in the public sphere. Then again, you're dead, so what do you care, right?

Even weirder, I read a blog entry by a guy whose daughter had been killed that day (there's no way to prove the veracity of this, but it seems believable). I read a blog by someone who had been hospitalized and died days later. Its one thing to blog when you've gotta blow off steam, or blog to be noticed, or blog to stay in touch with people. But to blog right after your only daughter has been murdered? What is driving that person to do that? I can only guess that he feels some sort of very real connection to his readership. But his readership is...almost illusory. It could be everyone and it could be no one. It could be curiousity seekers or people who actually care. There's something significant about the internet playing a role in these emotions, these moments in people's lives. I guess the internet has been a part of sex and love for years now, so why not death? Its one thing to use the internet for casual conversation or business. But these core emotions and events...

It sounds as though I'm totally opposed to it, which I'm not. In fact, I kinda enjoy this sensation of things evolving so quickly, faster than our ability to theorize about them, to even begin to figure them out. The way we define friend or loved one seems to be changing, maybe even the way we define love or death.

bloggies (or movlogs)

OK, so, here's my idea.

PHASE 1: Using existing rudimentary Flash animation and language translation technology, I create a program that can "translate" text into stick-figure animated short films. Most sentences that people write use a limited assortment of combinations of subjects and verbs, settings and people. Much the same way you copy a paragraph of text in English and paste it into babelfish, so too would you paste a block of text into the text-to-movie translator. Of course, the text would have to be a narrative of sorts, e.g. I got outta bed this morning, blew my nose, and blood came out.

PHASE 2: I get the program to randomly access publicly available blogs and recognize narratives within these blogs (as opposed to rants, raves, etc). The program translates people's blogs into bloovies, bloggies, movlogs or perhaps blilms.

PHASE 3: After working up this prototype, I get some funding and make the graphics and translation a bit better. No more stick figures. Something more along the lines of Grand Theft Auto.

PHASE 4: As an add on, I install "filters" that allow the user to render a block of text in a certain cinematic style. For instance, if you wanted to see "What I Did Last Saturday Night" as directed by Gaspar Noe, or Speilberg, or Scorsese, or whomever, you could. You could see "What I Did Last Saturday Night" as an art film, or as a Martin Lawrence vehicle.

PHASE 5: Rather than tell people what you did last night, you can show them by sending them a link. Or perhaps we'll all have Video Ipods, only w/ bigger retractable screens, so when I'm all, "whaddyou do last Saturday night," you'll be all, "well, let's take a look." And you'll whip out your VIPod, show me what's what, and we'll all have a laugh.

possible objections:

#1 Realism - The human faces and voices have been the biggest stumbling block (see The Polar Express and voice simulation software ). It seems no matter how crisp the detail in CGI images of faces are, we can still detect the differences, and they still seem ultra creepy. So, at first, we're going to have to make due w/ "What I Did Last Saturday Night," the animated series. But maybe that's more fun than the real thing anyway. As far as voice goes, you can do your own voice over of events, and do imitations of your friends for the dialogue.

#2 "We're losing the human touch, this is the death of storytelling, what will we talk to each other about, wa wa wa!" Yes, yes, we've all heard this objection before. When we tell stories, we're more in dictation mode than interaction mode. Nothing wrong w/ using motion pictures to communicate more than we do now. Humans will always have to create content for motion pictures, and those pictures will only have meaning if they relate to our social lives. If you don't like it, then stop watching TV, films, etc.

#3 "Who wants to read someone's shitty life (see My Bloody Nose above), let alone watch it and listen to it?" Good point. But I'd watch shit on TV that I wouldn't have the patience to read. Maybe I'm lazy like that, but I think I'm in good company. Moving pictures are fun. Someone recently made the point to me that 'Reality TV' fulfills a different desire than fictional TV - the desire to survey. It doesn't have to be "good" b/c its real. We'll always want to know more about our fellow humans. I, for one, would rather watch your Saturday night as directed by David Lynch than read about it. Or at least I'd like the option of that.

At the very least, something in this vein would be of use to funders or executive producers (for turning screenplays into rudimentary versions of the finished product, sort of a halfway step between storyboarding and the final cut). If you're poring millions into a big-budget action film, then you'll want as good of an idea of how things are going to go as you can get. Sure, there will always be un-simulatable x-factors like actor performances, but the less unknowns there are, the happier producers will be. I'd imagine CGI films already work something like this.

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!

old is the new new

Just read a fantastic article by Jonathan Franzen about his experience with his father's alzheimer's disease and death:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?010910fa_FACT1

Its long, and probably won't interest you unless you're thinking about a parent's possible demise. But if you are dealing with that, then it may help you in some way.

There's a bit where talks about how he remembers his father. He contrasts memories through letters his mom and dad wrote to his personal memories of his father. And then he riffs about how we remember things:

"The will to record indelibly, to set down stories in permanent words, seems to me akin to the conviction that we are larger than our biologies".

He goes on to speculate about the "postmodern resurgence of the oral and the eclipse of the written: our incessant telephoning, our ephemeral emailing..."

I'd say that emailing, and blogging, isn't that ephemeral after all. So maybe the written, searchable, (semi) permanent communication culture is back in a bigger way than ever. In the event of a blogger's death or alzheimers, their blog gains value. Memories fade and distort. I think as the blogging generation gets older, we'll start to realize the impact of this new imprint we leave behind. Its the next in a long line of technologies used to try to conquer the horrid emptiness left by death of a loved one. The first thing people used photos for were portraits which they held on to after the person died. Then sound, then video. Maybe its this increasingly giant sea of permanent records of people's lives that has our hip culture stuck in retro mode. With every sample of an Isley Brothers song, with every remake of a movie, our environment is made up of clothes/sounds/lives past.

But we don't consider this healthy, do we? We have pictures and old letters from loved ones who died, or maybe we broke up with someone years ago. People go to the trouble of destroying these reminders so as not to be tempted by them. I'm fine with remeniscing over old photos, but when I watch video of people who are gone, well, it just feels wrong. We can conjure their presence, but generally we choose not to, probably b/c once you start down that road, living in old photos, home movies, old blog entries, maybe it'll be hard to turn back to the absence, the uncertain.

I think IM culture was really the triumph of written culture. When people copy chat transcripts and save them (as I've seen in a few blogs), then we are setting in stone so many interactions. You may ignore your old chat transcripts, old photos, old videos, choosing not to live in the past. But maybe me or one of my dorky friends will take it, sample it, give it a new context and new life as a birthday gift or art. In these ways, we are decreasingly mortal.

alright, alright

Following up on last entry...

My offline journal has moved from literary to analytic and now, its actually looking kinda bloggy.

By that, I mean I just record stuff very quickly, broad strokes, not well written. Merely recording so that I don't forget. I don't like this. That stage of my life when I was unemployed and desperately unhappy living in NYC yielded by far the best writing in my journal. I took the time to be articulate.

Which brings me to a deep question: should you ever go back and edit/delete old entries in your journal or blog? I know everyone would say, "of course not! You've gotta remember the past, warts and all". Well, I've looked back at old entries, from, say, after the first time I got my heart broken, and those are some pretty big, ugly warts. Fundamentally, its nothing TOO horrible, probably not that different from anyone else's experience (yet this doesn't make it something we shouldn't be embarrased about others seeing, not unlike wiping your ass). And even though i know that its not likely that anyone will find or read that offline journal, I still have this urge to delete.

More on blogging

(Maybe this will be a meta-blog, where I just ramble on and on about blogs)

Remember 'logs?

You should keep a blog so you can go back days or months or years from now and look back and see what you were thinking, doing, or what your writing voice was like.

I've been keeping this quaint off-line journal for quite some time. Every now and then, I go back and read old entries, and I think its really changed my self-image. Obviously, there's a lot of "boy, was I stupid back then", but there's also a lot of "history repeats itself more than I noticed". I'm more aware of the patterns in my life. Phases, too - sentimental, ironic, literary, bitter, analytic, jokey. Like old photos, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe you inhabited these words.

And if you're detailed enough in your chronicling, it can really feel like time traveling, inhabiting the old you.

Favorite insult of the day: