Hello World

if a backchannel exists in the woods....

This from the blog of danah boyd. It is worth following - idiosyncratic, sometimes too US-centric, but frequently original and insightful.

 

apophenia
:: making connections where none previously existed

 

if a backchannel exists in the woods....

I'm sitting in a cafe trying very hard to frame blogs in Ong's terms and ignore the conversation next to me but i can't.  A woman is loudly talking, using her hands for emphasis;  the man next to her is leaning in and nodding and uh-huhing, saying confirming statements every few minutes.  They've been talking this way for a long time.  She's analyzing another woman, critiquing her view of the world, her actions, her attitudes.  She's looking for validation, offering stories to keep this guy paying attention. Finally, wrapped up in their conversation, i IM to Barb about it; she's sitting right next to me, pretending to blog but mostly chewing on her pen.  I find myself analyzing her analyzing this other woman.  Barb notes "you realize - we're the backchannel for their conversation."  And we both laugh.  My conception of backchannels is so biased by the primary discussion around it, whereby backchannels are a second front channel, a known presence of people with computers.    Do they know that we are their backchannel, the meta on their meta?  What does it mean that a perspective on their conversation is being recorded for posterity, only they will never know it.  Or will they?  What happens when strangers recognize digital records of their physical traces?  Ah, secondary orality.  I'm fascinated by moments when people don't realize the bridge between the digital and the physical.  My techno world is far too always techno. You know anything can and will be blogged.  But the rest of the world doesn't. As Barb notes, "it's no different from any other meta-gossip."  So what does it mean to blog about it, to meta meta it, to meta it beyond any realization of gossip?  There's a koan in here somewhere.

Conference Zombies

Last weekend I attended the Altered States Conference at the University of Plymouth, UK, organised by Roy Ascott and Michael Punt. There was an intriguing mix of papers. Here are notes on just a few:

Ian Gwilt showed a series of images of the screenbased interface, most notably a hand-drawn dos prompt which seemed to me to be intensely charged. I must locate this and use it somewhere....

Sue Palmer spoke about 'psi: mid space' a performance piece based on clairvoyance and the Ganzfeld telepathy experiment.

Michael Punt described Aby Warburg's enormous transdisciplinary library in which the books are organised by idea rather than the Dewey or other cataloguing system. Reminded me of social software tagging by the user's own keywords.

Martin Rieser showed the beginnings of an intriguing digital art installation to be shown at Bath Abbey this autumn and inspired by the famous Jacob's Ladder friezes on the outside of the building.

Roy Ascott spoke about material and immaterial connectedness and asked ' Is our drive to create wider and deeper networks an evolutionary impulse to engage more fully with a universal mind?' His talk also introduced me to a new concept, vegetal reality,  connected to psychoactive plant technology, and to the work of Tom Ray, who has moved from modelling A-life to consciousness research. So many cross-overs, so many intriguing intersections.

Perhaps the strangest crossover of all was the presentation from which this photo comes. Brian Reffin Smith, a Member of the College of 'Pataphysicians (always an indicator of strangeness ahead) spoke of zombies, the ultimate condition of constraint in which one manifests no qualities at all. There was some effort on his part to indicate that computers are zombies because of this, but generally the talk ranged far and wide beyond that including an exhortation to the audience to simulate zombies by tying up their heads in toilet paper (9 sheets would do it).  As you can see from the rather fuzzy picture taken with my phone, this group of highly professional transdisciplinarians had no hesitation in complying. Since it was in pursuit of higher knowledge I, too, participated by tying a loop of tissue under my chin. I have felt just a little bit more profound ever since...

 

Dear Humanoid...

I have received this email from the BlogInSpace team. It's great to hear that my blog will soon be transmitted, but I am puzzled. What makes them assume the author of this blog is humanoid?

Dear Humanoid,

Thank you for signing up to have your blog sent into space. The first transmission is scheduled for the week of August 12, 2005. Your blog will be included in that transmission. We will be using a five meter parabolic dish antenna with redundant high-powered klytrson amplifiers to transmit the signal (that was for all the nerds out there). You will receive a confirmation email each time your blog is transmitted.

Until then please help us spread the word! We have added a new feature called Space Posts that allows non-bloggers to upload a one-time message. We all have friends that don't blog. We don't like them as much as people that do, but it's ok to still be nice to them and share stuff like this.

Check out our new homepage
http://www.bloginspace.com

We have also added a new animated flash badge for your site with easy to use links for the HTML challenged. Please support our free services by placing one of these badges on your site. Aliens think they are cool and you are less likely to be abducted if your blog is cool.

http://bloginspace.com/badges.html

When the World Isn't Enough.

-The BlogInSpace Team

Listserv or Blog or both?

I asked the very international and eclectic Writing and the Digital Life list whether they would like to move to a blog, and the ensuing discussion and poll have been intriguing. Personally, it's making me move towards the idea of having both.  

This blog transmits to space

This blog is now regularly transmitted to space, courtesy of Bloginspace.com, who say:

Some 60 years ago humans first began transmitting television signals powerful enough to reach beyond our earth's atmosphere. Since then the media has continued to broadcast messages from I Love Lucy to the five o'clock news into space, potentially reaching intelligent alien life forms beyond our solar system. Blogs In Space is the first entity to allow everyday bloggers to transmit the news and thoughts of an everyday person into space. Simply put we take your feed and transmit it out on a powerful deep space transmission dish.

I look forward to hearing from our friends out there.....