29 Seeing Double and more on (moron?) narrowcasting...

upon reflection, the world looks better upon reflection

Urban lake...

Why Is Anything Important? (part of a slowly developing lame theory of technology and fragmentation read here and here for the other bits)

• Why Should Anyone Give a Rat's Ass About Narrowcasting/Egocasting/ (or about anyone who unecessarily capitalizes words)?
  
  I'm going to assume some things here that we all believe in, all drawn from the western liberal tradition:
  
  * a meaningful concept of the rationality of actions
  * that rationality of action requires knowledge
  * the problem of an appropriate theory of action
  * a concept of social order
  * some form of democracy or republicanism or some governmental form allegedly run 'for the people.'
  
  This is all pretty well stolen from the extensive works of Habermas (and the website I linked to there). But the point is that narrowcasting don't represent abnormality or even problem if you are no longer concerned about the public polity. If you don't believe that you should be concerned about others, or that others can even affect what you do, then life becomes a lovely narrowcast. As it should be, given those assumptions. But I believe those assumptions are incorrect. We all need to be concerned about our society. And I think we all are.
  
  

  pointless break to include a fragment of conversation I'm having with a wanna-be blogger

  r_wellor I'm desperately searching for a Scifi story I once read r_wellor about a society in which you can pay taxes or do one day's labor r_wellor a "loner" guy who wants to just be all the ant he can be.. r_wellor pmrefuses to contribute... r_wellor when he works he gets electrocuted r_wellor all his cells decide they don't want to pay tribute to the body anymore.. they want to narrowcast.. r_wellor If it was never written it should have been imchaordic hah. <cut> imchaordic of course, a lot of what i'm working on is building the network of relationship that allow a bunch of cells to work together to accomplish big tasks.  they need to trust, or at least understand, what each other are doing.

Point being that we have a political world that is (used to be?) mediated by discussions we have (had?) in a public sphere. But now, narrowcasting is taking that 'public' sphere and shattering it into a vast range of lesser spheres. With alarming results... <TO BE CONTINUED TODAY.. and PERHAPS EDITED INTO ENGLISH ;-p >

pick it out... it will be hard to see.. a brilliant song by a guy who has unfortunately gone on to the vast indifference of the universe....

Time marches on, Time stands still
Time on my hands, Time to kill
Blood on my hands
And my hands in the till
Down at the 7-11

CHORUS
Gentle rain Falls on me
All life folds back Into the sea
We contemplate eternity
Beneath the vast indifference of heaven

The past seems realer than the present to me now
I've got memories to last me
When the sky is gray
The way it is today
I remember the times when I was happy

Same old sun, Same old moon
It's the same old story, Same old tune
They all say, Someday soon
My sins will all be forgiven

CHORUS

They say "Everything's all right"
They say "Better days are near"
They tell us "These are the good times"
But they don't live around here
Billy and Christie don't--
Bruce and Patti don't--
They don't live around here

I had a girl, Now she's gone
She left town, Town burned down
Nothing left, But the sound
Of the front door closing forever

CHORUS

Let's just say administration stinks and leave it at that. But I am exhausted. A friend of mine of great moment and intellect has started his very own blog. I fear I am forbidden to say his name as apparently he is forbidden to say mine. ;-)

But the promise is so great that I just keep clicking back to the site every few minutes to see if there is a new post.

Alas. Three days and counting.

Pretty soon we get higher than I can conveniently count. ;-(

And it's just wearing me out. I am no longer the young supple-wristed scrapster I once was.

And all this clicking is keeping me from step 3a of my ongoing essay on narrowcasting and the soul of the polity. Next issue will be "Why is it important that the world is increasingly narrowcasting" and it will include visits from Salon, Habermas, and the mind of modern man!

Look.. I took an IQ test and it told me that I still had (by a point or so) "unlimited potential." But here I am not getting paid by anyone to pimp their agenda or products. Between product placement in movies, TV, and local bars (and I'm there.. I'm there!!) everyone is getting paid but me.

I guess my mom was right, I should have worked harder.

While I'm ranting, there is one other thing I noticed about the political payoffs- how little this Gallagher woman is being paid! She got exactly one-tenth of what Armstrong Williams was paid, which goes to show what the Bush administration thinks of equal pay for women.

Where is the outrage?

I mean about me getting paid.

I couldn't give a damn about Republican sexism.

Look. These three are for free.

But someone contact me.. really!

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When Blogs first started gaining popularity they were greeted by the computerscenti, quite predictably, with a bit of Utopian who-ha. Eric Jansen, perhaps losing touch with his chair as he typed, wrote that the web:

was wresting monopoly control of content from the hands of the Gatekeepers*. For centuries (since the printing press at least) content and its distribution had been controlled by the rich and the powerful. Yet, in just a few short years, the Web had removed much of that control and put a lot of the responsibility for content into the hands of the masses.
http://www.webraw.com/theory/weblogworld_050903.shtml

Jansen, like Redbeard below, was bothered by the fact that most of this content was utter rubbish. He attributes this fact to the technical hurdles one must overcome to be even the smallest of webmasters.

Therefore, he celebrates the invention of the blogging software which he maintains "have made the creation and publication of content as simple as browsing the Web." He also maintains, perhaps accurately, that blogs represent a radical restructuring of how information flows. Historically the capital necessary to put together any kind of news gathering and disseminating aparatus meant that only centralized and powerful operations could do so. Information flowed, or in many cases was dumped, from the centralized source to the individual. Jensen portrays that in this graphic:

He claims that the model has now been changed to the following:

Jensen's article is not dated on the website, but my guess is that is at least a year old and that if he redrew that graphic today he might even indicate that some news is generated directly from weblogs. The Iraqi war, at least, has given us the Bagdhad Blogger who provided a level of information that was not available through normal media channels.

But is this model accurate (particularly in an egocasting world - about which more soon)? I suspect it is not. I think that instead, information now flows into the larger system where it is immediately re-contextualized (ego-cast) for smaller groups, who then endlessly recycle the same mediated information around and around and around. And this is only talking about the informative realm of the blog. There is an entire other section of the blogosphere which contains no communication other than feelings and random personal experiences. In essence, the commercialization of the blogosphere actually fits Jensen's model, as many blogs become nothing more than advertisements of self to the world at large. Ego broadcasting, if you will, as opposed to egocasting. Try Livejournal on for size if you wish to see this in action.

In any case, my model looks more like this:

The utter lameness of this graphic in no way indicates how long it took me to make!

News may enter in many ways, but it quickly gets funneled off to what I call link-sinks. An enormous circular clusterfark of links from blog to blog, but all links pointed to the same fact, argument, or occurence. The Dean presidential campaign, or that portion of it that was online was a link and email sink; an avalanche of information and argument circulating among the already converted.

Occasionally one bit of argument will escape from one link-sink and make it to another philosophically inconsistent link-sking: That is always an argument that is clearly insane to the residents of the link-sink where it appears as an item of foolery. As more preaching to the converted. The Poor Man does this consistently with the utterly insane, metaphor mangling, grammatically challenged, and logic-deficient Kaye Grogan. I read those posts with great joy, but they aren't changing my mind about anything, and in fact, they may be closing it just a bit as my link-sink devotes itself to making conservatives look moronic by pointing a moronic one out. Later, I will explain why the bar, theatre and coffeehouse are all anodyne to this hyping up of disagreement and misunderstanding. For now I'll just wish I were at a bar. ;-o

Another way that people charaterize the link-sink phenomenon is blogrolling. Jennifer Howard, of the Washington Post has an excellent, if anecdotal, analyses of the blogrolling problem. In essence, everyone forms little circles of affinity and wallows in them. Somewhat anguished, Howard ends (more or less) with this:

Maybe the back-scratching started as revolutionary solidarity. Now it's a popularity contest in which the value of information is confused with the cool quotient of the person spreading it.

And so will I, as all this typing and "art" has rendered my right hand numb.

NEXT: Blogging as Narrowcasting (Cont.)

Over at another site I frequent I ran members by post total (on the perhaps witless theory that the more they posted the more involved they were in the internet) and discovered that many don't have websites at all, and many who do have minimal or.... er.... "simple" sites. More have blogs.

A question occurred to me.. are blogs slowly strangling the 'traditional' personal website and driving design out at the same time?

In some ways traditional websites were clunky ways to create blogs. "Here is a page that says what I want about subject A; here is a page that says what I want about subject B; etc.." Multiply as needed and you have a website. But a website also, by its nature, seemed to be more of a statement of what the person is/was rather than just their beliefs (and if you don't think there is a difference look at what President Bush 'believes' and what he is actually revealed to be by his actions; conversely, if you are dull enough to be a Republican, put Kerry in there). The blog is all about beliefs, in many cases beliefs borrowed from others ("Look! Look here! I found a link to someone who says what I believe way better than I ever could!!")

Traditional websites also required that you make a statement about your design skills (or complete lack of them) but blogs come largely preset. Blogs essentially take away design or rely on templates to achieve them. Not saying that's bad necessarily although a snobby part of me believes that most people with something sensible to say might have multiple skills that could be expressed better on more traditional sites. And again, it takes away a function through which websites revealed who a person was (often inadvertently. As my boy Redbeard put it: "Once upon a time, it was acceptable to knock up a lime green page with a few animated gifs and upload it to geocities. This made you a webmaster and developer. Cool") Still, even your bad design revealed something.

While I'm spitballing things that might be killing personal websites I might add tools like postnuke or ASP-based sites that do the same thing although they continue to allow design by multiple links within a site. Certainly corporate websites haven't helped either - driving out information and replacing it with commercial content. So maybe the personal website was already doomed and maybe it deserved to die. But I miss it... *sniffle* just an old man remembering the good old days!

|

One of his other albums was called "Walking in His Winter Underwear"
|I think we understand enough now......

Damn.. a week since I posted. Bad scrapper! Pics from Monterey...

A Universal Law -- Can't get What you Don't Have.

Over on Clever Nothing (the second finest place to be on the Intarweb - this site being the first) some folks are discussing job hunting and of course the first law of job hunting pops up: The best job hunting tip I know is to look while you have a job.

Which I start thinking about. During this cogitation it becomes clear to me that this is part of a greater and more universal law.. "It Is Easier To Get Another One Of What You Already Have." Which is also part of a greater and more universal law - "The Universe Doesn't Like You Very Much."

The universe exists to make your life difficult for you, in the end making it so difficult that you no longer have your life. That's a rigged game even by Vegas' standards. Following the principle that the universe is out to get you it makes sense that if you already have something you need, it will be abundant. Conversely if you desperately need something, it will be difficult to obtain. This is why you can easily find a Twinkie in Houston Texas (the fattest city in the fattest nation in the world) but can't even find a Twinkie crumb in Ethiopia.

This applies all over the place. Consider that classic bit of folk wisdom that "it takes money to make money." So if you are broke you can't possibly make money.

Think about how much easier it is to buy a car from a car-dealer when he doesn't know you'll be walking off the lot if you don't. Once any part, even a part as venal and insignificant as a car salesman, of the universe knows you need something it immediately becomes more difficult to get. You won't be getting the cashback bonus, you won't get the good APR, you won't get free extras. Because you need the car and the salesman knows it, that's why.

It works from other angles as well. Ever notice that being in a relationship makes you twice as attractive to others as being single does? Guess why? When you have one partner, you can get another. Try that when you're single. Welcome to late-night cable and lubricant.

The question of real need is one thing. But these rules also apply in situations where you merely want something. If you don't have something other people do have, you want it. We may call this the "Iron Law of Consumer Capitalism" and it is a subsidiary to the laws we have already discussed.

But it has the same implications as the other laws. In fact, we can tell it is a law because it applies even in previously non-existent circumstances. I never really wanted an Ipod - I barely even used my Walkman and I steadfastly believed that you should only listen to radio in a car or else your taste would neccessarily ossify into what you already had.

Yet, as soon as someone I knew actually had an Ipod? It became first on my lists of wants. Because it wasn't an actual need, I was able to achieve it (while the universe will toy with your wants, it is much better on taking away what you need -- this gets back to its basic structure as a mass-murderer). My point isn't that I snuck one by the universe (you never really do) it's that the "Iron Law of Consumer Capitalism" was waiting there to get me.

And you know what's really depressing?

I think I need a beer!

My POSSLQ, of all people, asked what a POSSLQ is. I was too polite to say, "click on the link, genius!" ;) But it did send me searching for where I had first come across the acronym and I remembered it was part of a poem by Charles Osgood. Couldn't find the whole poem, but here is a lovely excerpt.

• Theres nothing that I wouldnt do, If you would be my POSSLQ, You live with me and I with you, Please, dear, be my POSSLQ '

Then, bored out of some skull or other I did this remarkably unlife-like sketch of the skull in my fireplace box..

• 
  
  
• I watched the foosball games. Nothing as fun as watching Mike Shanahan's face get that, "first half of the first game of the playoffs and we're already being blown out" look. What a maroon!
  
  
• Finally, I became very offended by a terribly designed ad in The Economist:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Now really, all the money they must have spent on this advert and no one told them to get faces that were all being lighted from the same source? The woman's light source is straight out from the ad, the Asian guy's is from the upper-back-right, and the White dude's is from the front-left. It just looks goofy!

"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any more so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure." -- Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained

There is nothing as stupid as an educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in. - Will Rogers

A very late night fighting with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro. Sound trouble all over the place, and not just in files. Since my little problem didn't show up until after DVD's were burned, I had to burn a few to get it fixed. This takes a little time and at 4 in the morning I just kind of wander the house while DVDs are burning. The POSSLQ is fast asleep and silent every time I go by. Finally, but dint of much editing and reburning I get a working DVD. I go lie down and literally 3 seconds later the POSSLQ erupts into snoring. A slight-framed critter, the POSSLQ can nonetheless emit snores that could grind the shine off of diamonds. Snores that would make an obese sailor jealous. And, of course, keep me awake. Could my POSSLQ really hate me so much, so deep down, that it can express itself even in sleep?

Oh well... the snoring blotted out the low hum of the universe - that background sound of enormous gears and machinery creating bones and then grinding them into dust. So there is that.

Can I have a beer now?

It's actually a pretty funny quote.. you can put pretty much anything you want into it and it is still a remarkably ridiculous way to say you didn't prepare right.

"You go to convention with the OS you have, not the OS you might like to have."

Bill has his windbloze box asplode in public again.

I'm sure there is some Machiavelian aspect to this that I will come to see later, but for the moment it is time to give credit where credit is due. Tom DeLay apparently stepped up and did the right thing by not changing ethics rules to save his own job. Add this to the Tsunami and we might actually be seeing signs of the apocalypse.

2 Stuff I wouldn't eat...

"Dangerously" Cheesy Cheetos
"Wild 'N Reckless" ice cream (down the page)
53.5 Hot Dogs
"Deadly" Mints
"Killer" Beef
Paris Hilton
"Dangerously" Delicious Pies
Devil's Food Cake (OK.. that's a lie!)
"Terribly Sweet" Lizard
Deviled Clams (too close to Ms. Paris, though to be fair she might be more like Deviled Ham Spread)
Hellishly Hot Jelly
Cream Cheese "Surprise"

I suppose the list could go on forever...

• The best 10 first lines in Rock n Roll as figgered by the BBC (and swiped from J-Walk)
  
  

  1. Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London - "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's Going to get a big dish of beef chow mein." 2. Bill Haley - Rock Around The Clock - "One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock." 3. Jimi Hendrix - Hey Jo - "Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand." 4. Little Richard - Tutti Frutti - "A Wop Bop A Loo Bop A Lop Bam Boom!" 5. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird - "If I leave here tomorrow, Would you still remember me?" 6. Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart - "Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack I went out for a ride and I never went back." 7. ELO - Telephone Line - "Hello. How are you? Have you been alright, through all those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights That's what I'd say. I'd tell you everything If you'd pick up that telephone." 8. Paul Simon - Kodachrome - "When I think back On all the crap I learned in high school It's a wonder I can think at all." 9. Morrissey - Every Day Is Like Sunday - "Trudging slowly over wet sand Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen." 10. Elvis Costello - Alison - "Oh it's so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl. And with the way you look I understand that you are not impressed."

  
  can't really disagree with most of this.
  
  
• The Suckage that is Harry Potter gets its recognition. Man, I hated this movie. Harry's a wimp, the other lad is a red-headed version of a pop-eyed Black stereotype, and the chick walks around practicing the bitchiness she will need to ruin many men's lives in the years to come. Quidditch, as presented in the game, is a horrifying metaphor for capitalism/war in which the unwashed fight about near the ground for absotlutely no reason (5 pts) while the nobility swoosh about in search of the Golden Goose/Hummingbird/Insertable Sex-Toy (150 points) the ownership of which ends the game. Let's not even talk about the cheesiness of the ending in which, you guessed it, the power of love overcomes evil. This was old cheese when the Beatles used it in Yellow Submarine, but at least they wrapped it in some decent tunes.
  
  Anyway, as it turns out, Harry Potter justly wins an award for the most mistakes of any movie in 2004. In fact it crushes the competition with some 269 errors compared to only 64 for the second-place film, Spiderman II.

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