Listics

Jeneane Sessum started a conversation on diversity that was promptly taken up by many in our circle.  Or perhaps it just re-emerged and no attribution is needed.  Anyway, Halley Suitt suggested that we encounter our lack of diversity by finding "Ten New Voices."  My disclaimer on this is that I’ll play as long as people understand that these are new to me, even if they aren’t new to you!     I’ve gone this way and that on playing.  Lisa Williams did a quick list of ten people who fit the rules:

1.  They can’t be male if they are white;
2.  You must have five women and five men;

3.  You must have at least three non-Americans.

I quibbled with her:

"Yeah but, just because Joi is a non-white, not American, Japanese guy, how can we say he’s a new voice?"

"Just shut up Frank.  You’re so annoying."

I’m pleased to see that my interpretation has legs, based on this post today.  On the other hand it makes it that much harder to find a so called "new voice."  I’m pleased to say that there are two people I’ve added to my blogroll today who for me are new voices.

1. Keith Jenkins.  How have I missed Keith?  Well, I have, that’s all.  He’s a prominent journalist with deep roots in the web, and I’m glad to have learned of his work.  (Thanks to Dave Winer who linked to Steven Levy who said,

Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a
response on the "comments" space of her blog from someone concerned
that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media,
"we will throw out some of the best… journalism of the 21st century."
The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is
also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of
NEWSWEEK]. "It has taken ‘mainstream media’ a very long time to get to
[the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the
overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere… will return us to
a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only
one."

Okay, now check this out.  This is by way of what the maoists in the commune used to call "self-criticism."  Rebecca was referencing Keith Jenkins on March 4.  Halley referenced him Monday.  I ran into him on a link search inspired by Levy’s citation, and now I’ll list him as a new voice, because I "found" him on the web.  I think Shelley could make something of this, but for now I’ll forgive myself with a shake of the head.

2.  My second "new voice" is Lisa Stone, Surfette.  This link is also due to the prodigiously linking Dave Winer.  Stone and a group of other women bloggers are talking up a BlogHERcon meeting. 

There, I’ve consciously added two new people to my blog roll who meet the "Ten New Voices" criteria. 
For others out there who are interested in diversifying the community, I commend to you a Madison blogger I ran into through the good offices of Jonathon Delacour sometime in the last year or two… Chan Stroman, The Bookish Gardener.  Ms. Stroman is not a new voice to me, and therefore not a token on my game board (… do I have to tell you that yes, I’m generally conscious of my use of language?)  Anyway, she writes beautifully about gardening and many things cultured, and I recommend that you check out her blog if you have an interest in living well and living good, regardless of the color of your thumbs.

David Isenberg points to an article titled "The Infrastructure of Democracy." Ethan Zuckerman notes Benjamin R. Barber’s dissent.

Barber’s assertions include:

1. The internet is horizontal and privatized, which means that it’s
   highly segmented. Most people talk to people like themselves, and as a
   result, debates are often infantile and puerile.

    

2. There’s no source of authority on the net, so it’s hard to tell gossip from fact and lies from truth.

    

3. The fact that the Internet is unregulated means that it’s
   a monopolistic enterprise, dominated by corporate interests, notably
   media, hardware and software monopolies.

    

4. One third of the net’s search engine hits are for pornography

    

5. Virtual relationships are different - and not as important - as real ones.

Most of this seems undisputable and proof that the net is a high noise-low signal environment.   For validation of number one, we need go no further than the incessant posturing in the comments of A-list bloggers.   But there are break-out points and bridges between conversations.  Powerful memes gain broad distribution because  perfect isolation does not exist.

Number two, the power of falsehood is a threat to democracy across all media from dead trees to pixels.

Number three is neither good nor bad.  How many of us want to be bothered with the complexities of Multi Protocol Layer Switching?  The market power of Intel and Cisco and Microsoft and the international carriers speaks to accumulation of capital and investment of same… arguably "the way things work."

Number four… well, I’m not surprised but I don’t see the relevance.

Number five has the germ of truth… without looking into each others’ eyes, sharing pheromones, breaking bread, something is lacking.  But the tools are here to expand our reach, and nobody would say that telephonic conversations are less authentic than face to face, although we all understand that they are mediated differently, that norms for information exchange are subtly differnet on the phone from face to face.  I see the net as a powerful force for expanding my circle of personal relationships, and I find Barber’s observation remarkably limited.

I read Jon Lebkowsky’s comment on this and I find that I reflect some of what he said.  This is not surprising since he and I share space in an echo chamber. 

Norm Jenson continues to keep me up to speed with Quicktime cuts of good TV…  This is a public service that Norm performs.  He’s better than TiVo.

Here’s the Daily Show bit on the "New Journalism."  Jay Rosen appears.

Here’s Ward Churchill on the Bill Maher show.

Here’s Ari Fleischer on the Daily Show.
***
Madame Levy continues to astound with her poetry, personal revelation, and serendipitous linkage.  Read the Yak Shaving post and follow the links to enlightenment.
***
Locke and Mandarin Meg have been playing a duet with absolute and relative positioning of shaded text…  my CSS guru and gurette.  (See previous post below and compare with Chris’ to learn why while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi in the creativity department.)
***
Dr. Weinberger is off to confer with Bill Clinton in Madrid?
***
Canada is where it’s happening.  I say this in spite of Ranger Tim’s recent move to Silicon Valley.  Brian Moffatt, Tucows, Jon Husband, Doug Alder, and so many more… sorry that I left you off the list.  It just goes on and on.  What is it about Canada that has fostered such a brilliant e-plosion of webitivity?

Harry on headmap…among other things, it’s a "semantic web application for mapping human space."

Stephen Downes on the relation between blogging and community….

Paidcontent.org

Read the rest of this entry »

When I shuffled downstairs this morning in my jammies, ever alert to being tripped on the stairs by the cat or the dog, I turned on a PC with every intention of doing some online personal publishing but I was sidetracked by Jon Garfunkel’s essay on Blogger Archetypes.

I was reminded that I’m a socially engaged writer who can’t really keep up with the conversation, a slow two finger typist, ruminative, easily distracted by quotidian obligations, I can’t run with the pack.

By the time I get around to commenting on that which is of the moment, the rest of you have moved on to the next big thing.

(By the way, do you think Negroponte’s "work" in Honduras through ‘85 will inform his administration of the US combined  intelligence services?) …

I’ve long maintained there are no blogs. From Lovelady to Locke, there are insightful writers and a growing population of multimedia mavens using the web to share their work. BoingBoing and Dr. Menlo trump Jay Rosen every day. Michael Wolff, wherever we find him, whether he’s writing in New York Metro or Vanity Fair, simply lays waste to the self absorbtion at Scripting News. Nothing against Jay Rosen or Dave Winer, really… their work is valuable, but is it blogging? Of course it isn’t. There is no such thing as blogging. Blogging is an exercise in marketing, branding, and labeling, like podcasting. I suppose these things provide convenient labels… I know that Ann Althouse thinks she is a blogger and she has a wonderfully large readership. And I know that Chan Stroman is a blogger even if there are no blogs. Derek Powazek, Heather Champ, Jonathon Delacour… I access these people’s work on my obsolete CRT all the time. I seldom access Glenn Reynolds, although I do return to the Instawife photo from time to time, so soft-core, so inspirational. And who is this guy "Harry?"

I look at the categories on my typepad powered personal publishing site and I despair. Where is "Telecommunications?" Where is "Progressive Politics?" Where is "Environmental Concern?" If I can’t classify and categorize my own work properly, what right do I have to criticize others. In the seventies mag card typewriters were hot. In the early 80’s Norm Rosenblatt forced me into learning IBM’s GML. I balked and took a rapid left turn into word processing. The world of WYSIWYG lay before me and I haven’t looked back.

Online personal publishing is about empowerment and freeedom of expression. In America we used to have freedom of the press for anyone who could afford to own one. That may still be true, but as has been observed elsewhere, the barriers to entry have been lowered a lot.

While there are plenty of fishermen fishing fish, I continue to maintain that there are no bloggers blogging blogs. There are only people connecting and communicating, behaving well and behaving poorly, creating and copying, encouraging and frustrating each other.

Thank you Jon Garfunkel for your interesting taxonomy of online personal publishers. I’m not sure whether I’m a "flinger" or a "slinger," but enough about me. I’m off to read a few good blogs.  Including JOHO, of course, where this blog post started off as a lowly comment.

He’s a poet, he’s a picker

He’s a prophet, he’s a pusher

He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned

He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,

Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.
–  Kris Kristofferson

Robert Cox, no relation to the Wonkette, wants respect.  He wants to set up a news-beat, op-ed, broad brush personal publishing journalism effort.  he wants to follow his nose and write the copy he sniffs out.  He’s pleased that a NYT parody broadened his readership, and he wants credibility… as a journalist…to be a blogging journalist with a wide following and the respect of peers across the boundary of paid professionals and MSM writers.   At least that’s how I read him right now… this is a blog in prog as AKMA would say.

Madame Levy is a blogger.  She’s an artist and a poet and a mother and trouper.  Maybe not so much a striver…

This is still a blog in prog…

More to come, same bat blog, same bat rastard.

There’s a book afoot.

Imagine this blogger sitting in front of a CRT that will certainly soon be replaced by an LCD that is larger and more vivid, sitting here in a silk upholstered chair peckety pecking at the keyboard, and wondering about the ethics of all this.

Chris Locke, the Chief Blogging Officer, is my friend… he takes my calls.  Now he’s tied up in some sick relationship with the US Army.  I dunno…

I’m a pacifist, never mind the life style accoutrements like the rose pink Cadillac in the driveway and the basement room sparsely decorated with old Rolling Stone illustrations, a wing chair with stuffing coming from the seams, a little side table with an ashtray and a match blackened spoon.

I never said I was perfect, but trust me, I only take the gas guzzler to the track.  Why am I blogging when I should be in bed?  My temperature is down to normal today and I’m left with monstrous congestion and a sore throat and aching ribs from so much coughing.

Meanwhile I should be working on the Wisconsin Draft Counseling Network blog and instead I’m posting about how Uncle Sam reads Chris.

But I had the chance here to highlight some of the whacked out complexities of getting along in the world, so why not blog?  I asked Chris for a free ride on HighBeam.  Chris hooked me up.  Now I’m telling you that you should go read him.  You’re lucky actually.  He’s only been CBOing it since November so what he has piled up there in the archives is something you can work you way through.  This is the moderated Chris Locke, the business like CBO.  For the non-worksafe stuff, the totally deranged and gonzoid over the top stuff, you have to go to the EGR blog.  I’d recommend that you start with a few early issues of the ‘zine, Entropy Gradient Reversals, then read forward in the ‘blog from late 2024 to present.  It’s a roller coaster and the graphics and design are worth flipping through the pages even if you’re an ADD case like me.