i’ve runaway for a little bit, in order to work on my thesis. a dear friend of mine has lent me his little hideaway in the middle of the woods and i’m happily rejoicing, loving the beauty of nature while being productive. there’s something fun about having to choose to get online, through a very slow connection. it really does alter my relationship with the Internet when it’s not so very automatic. alas, it definitely alters my tendencies to babble incessently into this forum…
More corporate distrust pops up every day, and they still don’t get why a single online id is a bad idea… ::sigh::
Raffi posted a neat little google tidbit… mmm… networks…
he also pointed me to a nice little article that interviewed john underkoffler on Minority Report’s technology.
A few weeks back i was at a party where some people in the audience were doing activities that were not good for the community. So, the DJ decided to put a spoken word piece on, and i have to admit, i loved it. There is nothing better than an artistic response to a social situation.
I have to admit that i find it more unbearable to deal with the Internet every day. Rather than being a utopian environment, it brings out the collective worst in humanity. And yet hides the abusers behind a digital curtain, allowing them to be unapologetic and invasively abusive without any form of regulation to stop them. I’ve noticed a trend in my mail lately…. It used to be the case that my email was filled with messages about crazy new ideas, potential, excitement, check this out, wow, yippee. Good conversations, engaging thought, people becoming aware of the digital realm and its possibilities. Lately, it’s become the same bitchy environment that i live in on a daily basis. The he-said she-said has gotten out of control and the abuses are horrifying. My email is no longer primarily positive, but primarily negative or concerned. And for good reason.
On today’s list of interesting additions:
– spammers have stopped being apologetic ’cause the regulation just ain’t working, so they won’t suffer the consequences
– Microsoft is moving to a mandatory panopticon, with no user choice
– video games reduce brain activity (and what about TVs?)
– Carnivore continues to get more vicious
– surveillance is not just a sci-fi idea
Ok.. that’s enough. At least there are still some things out there to make me smile:
– a VW bug transformer!
– mathematical/multi-dimensional legos!
– Google’s mirror
Now, the question that needs to be asked is does my results on this one surprise anyone? I didn’t think so….
I despise deadlines. They make me anxious and confused and unproductive. So, Frank’s blog entry of the day put a huge smile on my face, as he quoted Douglas Adams:
love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Sadly, i don’t think that my readers appreciate this attitude as much as i do.
Some capitalist in the sky must jump up and down everytime that i have to write a paper because i spend more money when writing papers than i do at any other point in time. Of course, all of my money goes to exactly one place. Conversely, all of my friends must hate me when i write because year after year, they get suckered into the painful process of moving my consumerist acquisitions.
Today: 1 Lacan, 1 Foucault, 2 Kafka, 3 Calvino, 1 Goffman, 1 Aronson, 1 Jung… yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s a theoretical day.
I just had one of those thoughts that makes me go yay! Y’know – when something clicks and things make a bit more sense.
Postmodern theorists constantly refer to the fragmentation of the individual, seeing it as a modern day crises. This has always bothered me because the individual is not inherently fragmented, only their social presentation of self, or their social identity. The individual has a coherent sense of self, yet they negotiate multiple social selves depending on a given context. With little consciousness, people can quickly evaluate the context of a given situation, determine which facet of their identity they wish to convey, and construct a face from which to perform this identity.
The crises of self doesn’t come from the fragmentation, but the increasing loss of control over the contexts of a given situation. Technology has made it possible such that contexts collapse – spacial, temporal and personal. People don’t know how to properly perform their social identity because they’re not sure to whom and for when they are performing. Architectural cues no longer indicate what is appropriate – are they being recorded? at what time is this conversation being had? Contexts are collapsing.
One place where this is increasingly obvious is in fashion. Postmodern theorists see fashion as proof that the people are in a crises state. There are no longer social rules for when to wear what clothing, retro has gotten to a point where it’s nuovo, and fashion looks like the collapsing of all time, fabrics, and social roles. Perhaps this is not a crises in the individual, but a recognization that contemporary society flaunts collapsed contexts.
Yet while we hail such collapsing, we are simultaneously confused by it, particularly as we have increasingly separate roles in our lives. Society requires us to present an acceptable social identity in all situations, but in a collapsed world, this means presenting an identity that is uniformly acceptable, across all time/space/people. Such requires homogeneity. Perhaps the crises in the self is a rebellion against such a generic norm, where there is no individuality. People aren’t afraid of their fragmentation, they are afraid of the collapse of it.