vectors

In the public forum "park" discussion presented by Sunstein, people may take many streets to enter the park based on there points of origin and destinations. These represent vectors that bring them in contact with some public expression that is happening. Depending on how accessible/relevant the expression is, they internalize some amount of the performance.

On the internet, these "street" vectors are called by search elements input by users who then follow where they lead. The "parks" on the internet are web pages. For my example, the youtube page is a public forum (park) situated at the intersection of multiple vectors. (this means that there are a lot of parks which would seem to support the notion of technology leading to fragmentation; however, the fact that these public forums operate asynchronously means that the same individual may simultaneously operate in multiple forums.)

Despite the fact that they are intended directions, some search results may lead to unintended (or at least not fully intended) content. For example, someone searching for AMVs may come across an old song they've never heard before or vice versa.

Sunstein was talking about the daily me which accessing pre-set aggregators of links. two points: one, this is not the only way people use the interent. It forgets that users also may use the net to get information (use search engines) which may not be as easily narrowed across a single set of websites (points of view); and two, how rarefied is the content that most of us view?

culture wars

I wonder if the culture wars are an outgrowth of the increased use of psychographics in advertising. As marketers focus on targeting specific groups in their ads, they create language and difference. They accent these divisions across society. When ads exploit these differences, people are exposed more directly to ideas, language, and lifestyles that (conflict) counter their own. In the past, appealing to some common denominator left "everyone" partially involved...or at least they could identify with or fail to reject because it was part of the larger american persona. Now with this fragmentation of media messages, people are more directly confronted by the "other" that is counter to themselves. Not that these divisions were there, simply that they are more visible.

Book to Read

Adrian says read Belhook's imaginations of gay?

My friend Chainsaw

I had a friend in the Navy; we called him Chainsaw. He was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet, from Nebraska. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, he never even cussed except to say "Shucks!" or "Stinkin' A."

Why did we call him that? Well, you know that story where some neighbor went nuts and mass murdered everyone in the whole place and then they ask whoever survived about the guy that did it and they were always, "he was such a quite boy, really nice and then one day he just snapped and killed everybody with a chainsaw?

And that's why i call him Chainsaw

From my conversation tonight with TJ...

Books to read

Communication: The social matrix of psychiatry - Gregory Bateson
The Gutenberg Galaxy - McLuhan
Understanding Media - McLuhan
The Human Use of Human Beings - Wiener

From Counterculture to Cyberculture

I'm reading this book about the origins of the internet cultures. It traces some of the most dominant norms of the internet space back to california and many of the big name, 60's scene-sters. It's called From Counterculture to Cyberculture. This is probably the best quote i've found that tries to articulate the dissatisfaction with outgrowth of the boomer youth movement and a struggle to find a new power source for social change. It's taken from the introduction to the inaugural edition of Mondo 2000 published in 1988.

"All the old war horses are dead. Eco-fundamentalism is out, conspiracy theory is demode, drugs are obsolete. There's a new whiff of apocalypticism across the land. A general sense that we are living at a very special juncture in the evolution of the species.

Yet the pagan innocence and idealism that was the sixties remains and continues to exert its fascination on today's kids. Look at old footage of Woodstock and you wonder: where have all those wide-eyed, ecstatic, orgasm-slurping kids gone? They're all across the land, dormant like deeply buried perennials. But their mutated nucleotides have given us a whole new generation of sharpies, mutants and superbrights and in them we must put our faith--and power.

The cybernet is the place...The old information elites are crumbling. The kids are at the controls."

Of course, it's easy to dismiss this a feckless utopian plea into the darkness for a new generation of cyber-messiahs. In hindsight, it doesn't quite feel like hackers have managed quite the transition dreamed of in this declaration. But there is still cause to hope. The slacker generation has always kept it's own schedule. And after all, as a generation, the boomers contributions could be judged under the long shadow of their "greatest generation" parents, at least we, their children, have benefit of low expectations.

44 Scotland Street

Book by Alexander McCall Smith

Also In the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series