That from now on the modern belongs inescapably to the past - and this means that never before has the future seemed so dated.- will self, 'feeding frenzy'
Ironically, it's hard to get technology executives to think about the future -- the future in preservationist's terms, that is. - salon magazine
as we scrabble to construct the future, all we are doing is creating history so much faster. the beginning of distribution is also the beginning of archiving things before they are known. two recent triumphs of 'net community archivists - the wayback machine and the great 20-year usenet rescue. the 1901 census which had to close down , not having anticipated the immense demand.
instead of documents we have a clamour of voices, a million dumb memorials, a million falso reactions, a million clips of cam footage, a billion billion numbers. arrogant or dumb dynamism:
"one minute you have a mob of simple individuals, the next, after connection, you have useful,emergent, order" - kevin kelly
"the internet isn't built by love. it's built by psychopaths." paul sanders
individualism and the chap in fahrenheit 451 - "let's go upstream, but hang on to this thought - you are not important".
a constipated confucius
how brash and young and switched on this dialogue is. a vision where data mining is a substitute for wisdom and image recognition for intuition.
i dont mean and cant propose a kind of information luddism, nor can i propose a practical luddism of manufacture, other than a subject for meditation. you experience a craving for irreproducible things. who knows if there is not an aura of good work and satisfaction around well-made things? we have the means adequately to maintain ourselves, should not each person produce and consume things which enrich them? so much for objects in the physical world as in the virtual one.
blogging especially the ritual of the daily. a million screaming voices, the ceaseless propagation of trivia divides and masks and strengthens us. [unsure]
why narrate the ritual? at least, not in that format, quotidian
marking out. preset emoticons for an approved range of daily
feelings. falsely heartwarming friendship networks. just a sink of
so much time in reading and writing, a mire i try not to dip into.
i spend a lot of time on irc, but that's because of its mostly
private un-archived nature; individuals may log public channels,
but nothing is of public record. standards of inanity are
impressive. there is an equilibrium there. my channel runs a group web log
which i feel is all is necessary to collate and comment web
references, and gives those with too much or little ego for solo
blogging a - a forum? blogging is like an implicit party
conversation, each interlocutor only a narrator, pausing until the
next give up breath a moment.
our easy and shouting opinions are not of value.
our constant and favourite opinions are repetitive and banal.