d'oh

Yup, still alive a good beating with a sabre and a flu-now-turning-into-snotfest later. Been a naughty girl with the digiblippery, I know, I'm sure y'all missed me heaps. Promise I'll do better. Soon. Too much things in flux right now.

Digiworld abuzz and other thoughts

Oh no! It's the end of an era, like a death of the party, the community is dying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's all this talk about death of an era? Don't you silly digiblips know that if you hang around long enough in cyberspace everything comes back, even when it's supposed to be dead?

First I believed this was because in this new millennium even retro is retro-recycled. We do retro so well we're remaking shit before it's made!

Then I thought, maybe it's because the community keeps bits alive like zombie raising necromancers.

But now I understand: cyberspace's got a hell of an echo.

NB: I'm sorta reacting to this and this and this and this ...

Interjection of random silliness: whenever I click through to Larry's blog I think of Gonads & Strife. And  my mind associates this with the death of an era, and somehow quite fittingly, the fall of two towers. Maybe one day, I'll talk about that. Gonads & Strife forever, man.

Anyways, there's been some hissyfitting over some dude (no offense) writing an article on fantasy and postmodernism, with all sorts of people (also no offense) commenting whilst trying to be so much wiser than the previous blogue(r) about the value of the article and postmodernism.

Seriously? Are you kidding me? Here I thought we were safely moving away from that old dead horse and entering the newer, though obviously not quite so imaginative, era of post-postmodernism. But maybe this *is* post-postmodernism at work: everybody's so stuck in/on postmodernism that the only way forward is to keep reinventing what it means to be postmodern. Ad infinitum. Fire up that retro-recycler dudes.

The way I see it, six decades and counting is a whole lot of time to react to modernism. The only place where postmodernism isn't dead is in philosophy, any kind of taste in philosophy. All the rest is resisting and rehashing what came before, which is a natural mechanism in any kind of movement, in any kind of creative act, whether it is in body and mind postmodern or not. Just like modernism reacted to what came before. I, for one, am done flogging a dead horse over and over again. Let's just skip the whole P-mod and move on.

So anyways. Here I am thinking about that Bruce Sterling quote on cyberspace cuz it came up in a convo with the hubby yesterday ("Cyberspace is the 'place' where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. The place between the phones.").

And I'm thinking of how people are always so surprised when people die in train stations or other busy transit nodes without anybody noticing; it doesn't surprise me, train stations are perfect for spies to meet, thieves to earn their living, terrorists to plant bombs: not because there are too many people packed upon each other for any one to notice something strange, but because there are too many people on automatic pilot zooming through this non-place, this haven of anonymity.

And then I'm thinking maybe it's not so much the anonymity, but the fact that a train station has to the people in the daily commute transit as much no real physical existence as cyberspace. It's that place where mind does one thing, while meat somewhere else does something else. That place where strangers meet, spend daily hours together for months on end, and then suddenly the "community" falls apart as all participants walk away, as if they were living in some collective hallucination. Very faerie adventure like. It's a weird fractured and fractalised reality. X-nay on the P-mod, 'kay?

 

And whereas in faerie-tales there would be a source, or a lady of the lake, or a burning bush marking the border of the here and the other place, there's no tollbooth except for the simple everyday items, like a keyboard or a ticket dispenser. Not sure if things would be different if there were things like ladies of the chips and stuff. Like nine sisters.

And this makes me want to watch Avalon again for the nth time, but I loaned out the DVD and I can't recall to whom. Ain't the real physical world a bitch like that?

Do digiblips dream of electric trees?

I'm in ignomode, because I've got special visitors and special things to do this week, so I'm ignoring the digiworld. Just quickly checked the feeddemon, and the feeddemon has simply too much feed after five days. 100+ posts? There's no chance in hell I'm ever going to read all that (if it were real feed I'd be supersized in no time!).
It's also on moments like this I realize that only a very small amount I read actually makes some sense--to say it disrespectfully, most of it is just a waste of digital paper, which is okay until you think about the poor people out there that have to grow all the digital trees from which to make this paper.
You laugh, madam? Do I hear you chuckle, sir?
Well, think about it. The intarweb doesn't exist out of thin air, not really. Whatever we do, our whole online digiblippery needs real world silicon chippery to exist. And while intarwaste might be infinitely more easier to recycle, you still have to wonder about that whoopee let's fill all this free space with crap because it's okay mentality (and yes, I'm just as guilty). I wonder how many more servers are put online each year because we write too much online crap and the intarweb just grows and grows and grows?
Even if they start making servers from wood and other natural resources, a little historical sense and perspective should caution us for this mentality. After all, burning oil and rubber didn't hurt anybody either in the early days (or so they thought time and again), and progress never starts out as industrial and financial malicious intent. But by the time we realize we've put ourselves on the same list as other (over)specialized animals, we can't easily go back and extract the progress from the industry that feeds us and the finances that take care of us in our old age.
And, you know, who's to say that within a century we won't find out that filling digiworld with crap has a disastrous effect on nature or our own chances of survival? It's never the thing you expect that gets you in the end.

ooOOOOoooOOOooo

Came across an article on cyberposses, which led me to look up some things I've been storing for later, which lead me to look up some more recent articles and papers on identity theft, social network behavior, viral memes, and so on and so forth. Think Cow Watcher is readying to launch some balls on the digital bliphood story thingie. So excited.

To blog or not to blog

Somewhere in May, when I followed an SFtidbit link to the Blog of the Fallen (in response to amongst others Nextread's post on the death of SF), I jotted down some remarks on blogging and debate and so on, but apparently never came to actually posting. Which makes the futility of pondering and formulating questions and responses over here rather than over there less of a futility. Ha.

So, more as an exercise of thought than anything else: to blog or not blog? what is blogging?

Quote from the blog self:

And I'm left thinking, "What the hell is being argued now?  That one can hold an opinion unsupported by evidence and that one shouldn't be called out on it?"

Of course!  99% of your daily opinions are unsupported by evidence, or at least evidence that works outside of your skull/body.

Everyone has the right to hold opinions [...]

This might be reading between the lines, but in your starting statement seems to be hiding some value judgement about people who cannot support their opinions by evidence: in your world, they don't exist.

But at the same point, having an opinion, strong or weak or indifferent, does not give that opinion holder shelter from others' skepticism.

Of course not, but then, naming it skepticism doesn't mean that it is anything else than just another opinion.

Sometimes, the blogger has to provide evidence that s/he is well-grounded in what s/he is trying to argue or else just be silent for a spell and try to listen to the points another is making.

Well, that's sort of saying that you have to listen to all a Jehovah witness has to say when he comes ringing your doorbell. I believe it is no different than in the real world: as a commenter you also have to know your blogger. If you go to a house party of a colleague, of whom you know he doesn't talk shop outside of the office, then everyday etiquette is: you don't talk shop. A Jehovah witness sure knows that since it is your door, you can do as you please with it.

And: I'm not sure opinions need to be validated by evidence. Good old inductive argumentation requires some factual statement, true, but let's not pretend a factual statement is anything like solid proof. In debate, your listener may always dismiss your factual statement.
But then, apart from watching too much Holy Grail in childhood, I had favourite jokes like:
   - What's the difference between a blackbird?
   - Between a black bird and what?
   - What's the difference between a blackbird?
   - Errr, I dunno?
   - His legs are of the same length. Especially the left one.

Or as rahkan said in the comments:

It kind of depends on what kind of conversation you're trying to have. And who you want to have it with. Everyone on the internet is not necessarily trying to talk to everyone else.

Then Martin said:

Gav, I don't know why on Earth you would think that you have to just take or leave opinions. That isn't how newspapers work and it certainly isn't how blogs work (it also completely goes against your conclusion that blogging is about expressing an opinion). Why would you have comments enabled if this was true? As for the idea that an opinion's authority is based on your view of the commentator, do you really not think the opinion itself plays a part?

I like the analogy of a newspaper's opinion piece and blogging (with comments off). You could write to the newspaper with your counter-arguments if you don't agree, but writing a thoughtful, well-argued response is just as much work and just as time consuming as doing it online. Most people don't: hence opinions are there to take or leave. Besides, in the world as it is today, you'd go crazy (and certainly would not get much written that should get written as a would-be* author ) trying to come up with counter-arguments for every opinion you don't agree to. So, while the writer of an opinion piece could see getting counter-arguments in response as the prime intent of voicing said opinion, s/he will only get a select few of counter-arguments: those people that can actually be bothered.

Having or not having some valid base for the words you utter, adhering to some form or another, using whatever channel you want: even if your words have as much power as you can muster (arguments, factual statements, proof, whatever), they will never have the absolute power of coercing a response. You cannot make the deaf hear.

All in all, the conversation in the comments of said post only illustrated to me that I really and truly don't buy the illusion of blogging.

What illusion?

Well, the old adage on opinions and assholes holds, and the illusion of blogging is that a blog is a platform for debate. It's not. It's a soapbox, only good for giving your opinion, with that change that you can make sure nobody can come and throw rotten tomatoes because they didn't like your opinion or the way you voiced it.

Giving an opinion and having discussion going on in the comments is not a debate: you are not on equal footing. Twitter is perhaps a better platform for real debate, except that it's an even shorter form so there's even less space for thought and tact.

What's more, the question: do you twitter?, makes me want to shout: No! I'm not a frigging bird!

Plus: God forbid that I'll have something else/new to take my mind of the things I should be doing.

Plusplus: Switching from one Twitteroo to another and trying to filter out the idiots that swish past strafing off a few words on another topic you're not interested in (sort of like trying to have a discussions in a noisy bar or dancing club) is making me cross-eyed. But perhaps there's some integrated Twitter reader I haven't found yet that makes this easier? If not, someone should go and invent it NOW!

But wait. Hold on. What am I asking?

• a public platform
• input should allow a decent length for thoughtful responses
• integrated, so as a public, whether you want to join in or not, you can at least follow the debate without getting a headache

Does this sound familiar to you? IRC anyone?

Blogs are a soapbox, made to shout out your opinion, not made for real debate. So, debating on debate etiquette or nature in blogs is *head explodes*

Since the blogger can adjust for mood whether s/he will allow a response, you as a commenter are subordinate: the whole format of blogging dictates that you are not equal to the blogger.

As a commenter you have as much power as when you'd ring somebody's doorbell to inform them they have a very nice garden. The garden's owner may strike up a conversation on azaleas with you, they may just nod and make the finger at temple for crazy motion once they've closed the door, or they may worry about safety and call the police. So, if you as commenter really want to use blogs for debate: know your blogger.

Nothing in the nature of a blog holds the promise that you could actually come to a real debate. And no factual statement ('but most blogs allow comments to have a debate') can change this: it's not because you or any number of people use a spoon as shovel that a spoon was not originally made for eating soup.

It seems to me that with every progression of technology, the basic characteristics that work best for a technology are abandoned for looks and comfort.

I'm not conservative, or somehow scared/confused/bedazzled by world-changing technology. My first computer was a ZX80 and I was something like 8 years old. Since then I've witnessed lots of changes, in technology and in the meatball response to that technology. Some are good, some are bad, most of them are here nor there. But like I said in a previous post on the value of innovations, whether ethical or social or financial: are innovations really world changing if they cannot do your laundry and ironing?


* haha: at my first attempt I wrote "wood-be". Damned Flemglish. Need more coffee!

Shtuff

I came back from a busy weekend to find my feeddemon overflowing (135 posts to read? Are you crazy? Don't you people have a life?), so I had to kill some blogs I was following.
Part of the deluge however are the NIN teasers on the How To Destroy Angels project, which sounds like yumyum and more. Can't wait till summer.

On the 1st I met up in Planckendael zoo with ex-colleagues. We had a pick-nick the other visitors were jealous off, caught up with each other's lives, and discussed and laughed about the miserable state of Belgian politics. Since the party was mixed French and Dutch-speaking, hilarious scenes ensued when we started yelling at each other. I was actually pretty glad to see the shocked and horrified reactions of the nameless masses around us, when part of the group was lagging behind and I yelled (in Flemish): "Always the same with those Walloons, always have to wait for them lazy asses!"

The day after I had another tournament. In the elimination I came up against the same woman that whooped my ass during the Championships but this time I kept my cool and managed to use my superior tactics. I conquered her, but then came up to someone who's been in the top 3 for years and years and years. I did my best, but the dying went quickly. I ended up 6th (of 11).
The problem with senior women's saber is that mid-list hurdle: the group is quite small, and the top of the group are those women who have years of experience and youth going for them, and the difference between lower half and upper half is actually quite extreme. But I'll get them, slowly but certainly.

Also, I applied for a job that seems invented just for me, so cross your fingers!

Today I hope to finish some of the document I'm preparing for the club, so I can finally turn my attention to Tiger again and clean that mess up.

The Unbearable Lightness of Detail

My sinuses no longer feel like I've been eating grenades all night, so I should stop reading blogs. Blogs keep me from doing real work, because they tickle my brain and then I'll just have to write some shit about a subject because I like to hear myself talk, especially in an empty room. Seriously, enter a single person and I'll shut up.

The current spark comes from MCN's blog: on tie-ins, so there, I'll ramble a bit and pretend I'm alone in this room.

I've never read a tie-in, or fanfic, or whatever. They have intrigued me over decades, but I never got round to picking one up, and not always because there was a snooty friend with snooty remarks standing right next to me. The thing withholding me from reading tie-ins is twofold:
1) it's a series, and when I read A, I know I'll just have to read B no matter what the quality of writing/storytelling/worldbuilding/yadda. Or, more wearying, if I read K, I'll want to read L *and* A. Choices! [sigh] I'm not good with choices. And no, even if it are separate stories strung out through time and produced in no specific order I must have some sort of order (no order equals more choices!), either chronological in written time or chronological in write time.
2) most of my series-quota goes to television series. Not that I watch tremendously much television, but I do have some series I follow. And when there's not enough television series, I'll go on a DVD binge and say watch all of BSG in a long weekend or some such. Because A=> B => C until my brain shuts down. It's sort of like giving me a box of delicious cookies and I'll just have one. Ha. And another. And then another to unlearn the bad habit. And well, that one just looks lonely now...

Both points together make that: to go on a binge I need to have everything on hand and in order. Believe me, you did not want to see me after my BSG-thon where I realized I had to wait for Season 4! Like, a whole summer!
So before I open the tie-in can of worms, I think, I should read Pratchett. Yes, he's one of my gaps. And since I put the library in order yesterday, I know exactly how big a gap it is.

As to writing tie-ins: when I was young I made up fanfic for Les Chevaliers du Zodiaques (Saint Seya for ye English types). I invented new characters, made sure every little detail matched up or was accounted for. It was fun and immensely gratifying, even if I never wrote down more than three sentences (all the rest is still stocked somewhere in a dark recess of my brain).
And when ST:TNG and more came along, Cow Watcher started churning out cool story lines, even if I would not hear of it because I was into *serious* literature then. No, no tie-ins! By the time I thought like it might be fun to try anyway, there were already walls filled with ST:TNG tie-ins and the idea became too daunting.

Daunting because we're talking fans as a reader base. And we all know where the word fan comes from. Add to that: fans are alien creatures to me, because I completely lack the gene for fanaticism. Sure, the dude knows how to make music and I'll probably buy every CD he cranks out, but why would that make me interested in his favorite food or make me want to have his babies? Simply incomprehensible.
Daunting in no lesser way because it must be a tremendous job to write a tie-in, with all the little details you have to take into account. Unless it's your particular geek-world, I'm thinking lots of hours of studying, and editing and re-editing. And then editing some more. Somebody out there might go "The Death Star's thermal exhaust port's above the main port, numb-nuts" and the core of your superb action finale comes crashing down.

But then, looking around on the web, you even get crazy fanatics like that if its your own original fiction, and not only in the hard SF section of readership. I fear it. It scares me, how do you deal with stuff like that?

And then I take a big gulp of air and realize that whatever hairsplitting nitpickers might throw at me (once I do get published, and do get readers that might harbor one of those creeps), it's my party and I do what I want to. The thermal exhaust port's above the main port, you say? Well, *I* am using the Empire's revised designs from Return of the Jedi, nana nana naa naah! (Every time I see that Buffy scene it makes me cringe with fear and cry with joy at the same time).
It is the sort of problem solving that's inherent to the writer's toolbox, I guess, and it makes excellent subplots (well, sure, you'd think it's impossible for this guy to survive, but what you don't know, dear reader, is that he's part Frugnithal, and those aliens have yadda yadda...). Or changes to the basic plot (which is usually somewhat more annoying a problem than weeding out a splurge of subplots).
You solve the problem by giving the reader something to help suspend belief. Okay, the real die-hard nitpickers might not be so easily swayed, but they can and will be challenged to a saber fight.

See, back at the time I was watching reruns of reruns of Les Chevaliers (and Goldorak, Albator, Capitaine Flam, Dragonball) I also watched the one soap that will not die. Yes, I used to be a closet The Bold & the Beautiful watcher. I exhausted the excuse that I was a serious couch potato and simply could not help myself staring at the box with the little people in it, that I was waiting for Dragonball to come on, or whatever. Not only was I ashamed to admit I enjoyed watching this ... pulp ... people scorned me (gently) for it.

Only years later I realized that a lot of what I know about storytelling (especially concerning emotional yanking of chains and cliffhangers) I learned from watching B&B. They perfected the Art of Belief-Suspension. Studying how they fooled and lured me as a watcher was a great school. When done well, suspension of belief is a magic trick, because, seriously, how many times can she miraculously return from the dead to seek revenge on Stephanie Forrester? You make sure your reader is "in" your story, i.e. emotional involved *and* invested, and the reader will go and instantly forgive&forget whatever needs to be f&f'ed.
But then, also, suspension of belief only works as long as your audience is immersed and emotionally invested. When the TV goes off, and your audience goes: not her, not again? Where's Buffy when you need her? you might want to consider that particular horse dead and flogged.

Alright, end ramble. Need food.

Angina Irretis (or Interretis?)

Online presence is good, right? You're there, airing opinions, being Someone. Though I must confess seeing how there's no comments, followers, yaddayadda, makes me feel ambivalent.

Then suddenly there's: Train-wrecks! Implosions! and while they are interesting from a voyeuristic viewpoint, the thing I'm seeing hits me with some weird PTS. Because, a long time ago I got into a serious train-wreck. It was emotionally devastating and the worst part was: those idiots were too far away! In a bar I would stomp off in a huff and have them look at my shiny hiney/you can't touch this. I'd pour my beer over their stupid faces, or better yet, steaming hot coffee. Eat this mofos. If necessary I'd kick them in the gonads and give them strife and then some!
But online, you're helpless like that and I don't cope well with helpless. Helpless makes me cry, then the tears make me even more angry and then I cry even harder. Angry snowball of snot and tears. Not pretty.

So back then, I concluded online presence is not good. Don't get me wrong, I met some great people through online life, and funnily, it's hard to stay in touch with them online once they've migrated from an existence as digital blip to real life persons. Also, I have this thing where I have to overcome a great feeling of "bother" to meet up with people in real life. It's not a life-impeding angst or something. Just, *le sigh* such a bother.
Anyways, I want to be a published author, not a columnist. I'm not looking to go out into the street and voice my opinions to strangers. I want to sit at home, with a safe distance between me and the strangers, and write my shit. That's all. Strangers are scary. Unlike people I know, and people I think up, I don't know how they'll react. They're scarily ... strange and alien like that and very exhausting.

I had some point I was going to figure out while I poked at it, about how if you're the center of flame it is more intimate and personal than being paraded through the streets in peck and feathers. It's so in your face, all over your little window into digiworld like a firewall. And the only thing you can do to stop it, is pull the plug, put the computer to sleep. Which is sort of like poking your eyes out because some discussion derailed into the flames of hell, which is kinda overkill.

But I think instead I'm going to finish the Remix Project first draft and do real life stuff, like cleaning and groceries.