:: Made me think ::

All I can say to this is...hmmm...

:: Love/hate relationship? ::

What do Guiness, Apple, the Metropolitan London Police and Star Wars all have in common? Their advertising has either been critiqued in blogs or had links to their spoof ads from Mad Magazine or "Dave from Canada" showcased in blogs during the last month.

I wonder why it is that so many bloggers seem to have a love/hate relationship with advertising? It seems curious, given that a big part of the appeal of reading blogs is the ad-free nature of the vast majority of them.

What's the connection? Where's the intersection? Is it because of the ad-heavy nature of the commercial Internet? Is it because so many of the people who create the ads are, as a consequence, online? Is it because advertising has become so important to our 21st century culture that it has become popular culture in its own right?

Questions abound, as do possible assumptions, but no concrete answers are to be found to date.

Have an opinion? Voice it in the new weekly poll, over there at the left.

:: Birth of the blog ::

The following is a creative essay entitled "The Birth of the Blog" that I did as a way of explaining to my fellow students the historical context behind blogging, online activism and the image versus text representation debate from Communications/Cultural Studies.

This essay was read in class as a lead-off to my November 28 oral presentation on blogging as a form of active response against online corporatization.

In the beginning there was the word.

The word begat sentences.
Sentences begat paragraphs which strung together
into a language that the people
could use and create themselves.
Through this, language begat communication
and communication begat meaning.
Meaning became understanding
and understanding gave birth to pleasure.

Thus did the people look at the word,
the beginning of it all.
They said the word and proclaimed that it was good.

Then along came someone who asked,
“why can we not represent what we see exactly?
Why do we have only words
to show what we see is real and around us?”

And the Image was born.

And along with the Image came the Company.
The Company begat a Brand
and the Brand begat the Message.
Through the Message came its offshoot, control.
Because of control
born of the Company and its Message,
Image began to wall off itself from the word.
Image began to compete with the word.
Image used colour and motion
to illustrate to the people that only the Company
could be trusted to provide their meanings and pleasures
in the online world.

The people saw the image,
experienced the motion
and they believed.
They turned their back on the word.

Until, one day, it happened.
Another person came along and said,
“see? In this place, controlled by the image,
the word is still alive.
It is there, it has meaning.
But the meaning is yours to create,
yours to control, yours to decide.
Take the word, go out there and multiply.
Bring the word to the people,
for them to decide
their meanings, their pleasures in the online world”.

And so they did.

For a copy of my presentation, drop me a note.

:: Let it snow! ::

I love how the light looks on an evening when it's snowing. It's brighter outside then usual for this time of November night, almost as if there is a bit of sparkle in the sky.

And the snow! It's so beautiful right now, before the people start marking it with footprints and the cars start churning it into grey-beige furrows. Everything is cloaked in this light fluffy cloud of snow, edges softened, colours muted. The trees look like they're wearing a light coat of starry whiteness and there is the smell of of crisp winter in the air, tinged a bit with the scent of woodsmoke from my neighbour's wood-burning fireplace.

Nights like this make me want to be a kid again, whose only care is whether or not Mom would let me take my Crazy Carpet out to the dike behind my childhood home to zoom and swoosh down the steep hill, over and over and over again.

Wonder what the neighbours around the street would say at the sight of a woman making snow angels in front of her condo building at 10:00 at night?

:: Presenting...the blogosphere! ::

As part 1 of the two part project for which this blog came into existence, I did a presentation in my COMZ class tonight on blogging as a form of resistance against the corporatized Internet. I promised a few people that I'd post the links to the blogs I showcased in my presentation, so here they are....

• Anil Dash


• Asymmetrical Information


• The Bitter Shack of Resentment


• BookSlut


• GeeGaw


• Literacy Weblog


• Little Green Footballs


• Mikel.org


• ni vu ni connu


• NoWarBlog


• No Watermelons Allowed


• Rc3.org


• StarkDavingMad


• this boy is toast

And the 15th and final blog shown was this one… I-Space.

It was a weird thing trying to sum up the totality of experience and activity from the blogsphere in a mere 10 minute presentation. Even with keeping the screen snaps of various blogs down to a mere 15 and showing them for only 4 seconds each (paltry and insignificant exposure given their scope), I walked back to my chair feeling sort of...let down, unsatisfied, deflated. So much more to be said. Guess that means I need to keep blogging even after the professor's vote on my scholastics are in. That way I can keep on thinking about all of this and keep on participating in the medium that is the blogging.

If any of you reading this are fellow Concordia students who were in class today...welcome! I recommend sideways-surfing through the sites above, at left or through any of their link lists. I also urge you go to Blogger.com and get your own blogspace. Doesn't matter what the topic is -- be it based on your knowledge or interest in shark attacks, truth in advertising, gender and identity, rap music, graffiti, 'zines, or whatever. Get online. Create your own meanings and pleasures. Keep the word alive.

Peace! out...

:: Perfect ::

Ftrain: 'Log Frenzy (Abstract)

What more needs to be said?

:: This meaning is obvious ::

While I don't know these two bloggers personally, the power of the blogging medium has affected them both in a rather personal way.

This is, apparently, the first known wedding between bloggers who met in the blogosphere.

The "meanings and pleasures" in blogging for them seems obvious enough.

Congratulations to them both.

[ Found via Asymmetrical Information ]

:: Online Advertising - Art or litter? ::

In my daily wander through the blogosphere, I came across a link that lead me to a site called "The Banner Art Collective" in which the site's managers/writers choose to highlight and extol the virtues of banner advertising.

Here is an extract of what they say about their site's purpose:

By creating and distributing art within the limitations of WWW advertising, net.artists are forced to work under stringent rules. In that regard, banner art follows in a historical tradition of working against and within the limitations of a strict, sometimes arbitrary, form. In exploring this form, they also explore the marginalization of net.art; in banner art, this marginalization is quite literal.


Banner art also forces viewers into a position of empowerment; as they discover banner art, they will become aware of the both the pervasion and possibilities of advertising space on the web, experience new art in new contexts, and be granted a sort of patron status, as they can host on their own websites work they find compelling.

This struck me because it seems to me that the writer of this text is trying to make the same kind of argument for banner advertising that I make for blogging, but is turning the argument on its ear. Normally, I would argue against corporate anything and for independent, grassroots efforts, online activism and netizen empowerment. The Banner Art Collective however, employs the same type of language I would use for those purposes and shoehorns it to justify or glorify an online strategy that has created gigabytes, nay terabytes, of Internet litter.

I take particular issue with the second paragraph quoted above, in which the writer has claimed, "Banner art...forces viewers into a position of empowerment". I'm not sure of their take of the term empowerment, but in my reality, that word means, "actively having and employing power". I would argue that banner advertising does the opposite. It intrudes on my consciousness, it forces its way into my line of vision, it demands that I view it and notice it, regardless of my wishes in the matter. Some of the more offensive advertising online, the popovers and "subvertisements" to use the Collective's own terms, is particularly onerous, because it literally takes over my computer and my online browsing experience. It forces me to click the ad in order to rid my screen of it, so that I can go back to reading the content I was trying to absorb. It takes my eyeballs hostage (and sometimes my ears too) and doesn't let them go until I give it back whatever it wants - be it a click or just a few seconds time to let the banner's message worm its way into my brain.

I do not agree that online banner advertising is a poor, beleaguered medium that requires artistic examination or fresher viewing, which, upon a thorough browsing of their site, seems to be the purpose of the Banner Art Collective. The ads presented aren't so much ads as un-ads -- the purpose of them is unclear, their sales message distorted, murky or just plain absent. Of course, this is part of an online advertising trend I've noticed in the last few years: Don't tell me what your ad is about. Instead, just put up something obscurely artsy in the hopes that I will click it and you can "claim" my eyeballs as proof of a visit from my demographic when you re-sell your services to other advertisers.

(I'm getting ahead of myself -- I'm going to deal with the corporatization of the Internet in a different blogpost, tomorrow or this weekend)

In an absence of hard information on the site telling me what the true purpose is underlying this site, I can make many assumptions, the most convincing of which is that the people producing these ads are actually looking for jobs as banner ad creators for actual corporate campaigns.

I guess I'm starting to rant a bit now, so I'll stop here. As always, note that this is my opinion and yours may be different. Thus, I urge you to take this post however you will -- ignore my framing of this issue and site and create your own meaning based on your own visit to the Collective's site.

[Banner Art Collective link found via the Creative Generalist]

Have an opinion on this post that you care to share? Send it!

:: Exams ::

The Christmas exam period began officially for me tonight, with the mid-term exam for my full year social psychology course. After writing 2 essays on Irving Goffman's Dramaturgical Analysis model and Erik Erikson's psychosocial life stages theory, 10+ pages each, longhand, I wanted to come home and kiss the tan-putty exterior of my spiffy PC. Thank goodness for keyboarding! How did I ever do school assignments back in the pre-PC days? Sheesh -- I shudder to think about it.

As such, I'm more than a little hand-sore, brain dead and body-tired. I just want to plop down on my green couch and watch Kiefer Sutherland live his way through another hour on 24. There is no original thought or concise analysis left in me to share with you here, tonight.

Until tomorrow then...

:: Open representations (Part II) ::

Inverting web design

In Part I of this topic, I discussed the absence of images in the blogosphere and argued that this puts stronger emphasis on the textual content of each blogspace.

In this post, I want to discuss how the emphasis on the text begins at the beginning, when a blogger is managing their blog.

Creating a blog using a system like the one here, Blogger, is suprisingly easy to do. You fill in a short registration form, choose a name for your blog, decide if you want Blogger to provide you with the space or you will use space you own from elsewhere on the net. (You'll note by the little icon down there on the left that I let Blogger host I-Space) With these three steps completed, voila! You're in.

The interface is very clean and white, rather like the word processsing packages we are all used to using. While there is a bit of HTML needed to add in fancier formatting types, the basics are provided behind buttons for the beginning blogger.

Adding a graphical interface that is well organized, attractive and keeps the emphasis on the content is not usually an easy feat. However, because of the way services like Blogger are setup, your textual content stays independant of the rest of your blog. That means that to add your interface, you need only browse through a list of templates and choose the one you wish to apply to your own space. A few more clicks and that's it.

So what does all this have to do with Stuart Hall and his ideas on representation? The idea of the image being dominant, of it being the controlling factor in putting out meaning, of letting it dominate text, of letting it represent the message, is thwarted in the blogosphere. With the emphasis in blogs staying squarely on the words and phrases and paragraphs and textual posts, the imagery and colour and visual organization are subordinated to the message. Their purpose, if present, is to provide highlight and organization for the words, rather than the words supporting the images, as is the case elsewhere on the corporate Internet, and indeed elsewhere generally in the media's mediums.

It would seem to me, then, that there is less chance of mis-representation. While I am not naive enough to believe that no one ever misinterprets a textual message, I do believe it is more difficult to do.

Thus, the bloggers' are able to keep the limelight focused squarely on their ideas and intentions.

In the next part of this topic, due later this week, I'll discuss how things are with images and representation outside the blogosphere.

:: Search and ye shall find ::

In the spirit of giving credit where it is due, I've just added a Google search bar at the bottom of my space, thanks to a bit of code-lifting I did from NoWatermelonsAllowed. I've tweaked the code of course so that it searches my own space. It's pretty cool. Try it out.

:: Truth and more truth ::

Considering part of the purpose of my Mass Communications course is to highlight the extent to which advertising, brands and consumerism have permeated our North American culture, I found this article in The Onion quite humourous.

And for real raw truth in advertising, check out this clip (requires QuickTime plugin and contains many obscenities - you may not want to watch it at work!)
(Found "Truth" clip via The Creative Generalist)

:: Confessions of an Apple fan::

In a flu-induced, Neocitran-enhanced break with the actual topic of this blogspace, I feel compelled to share a link to this great satirical video clip (requires Quicktime plugin to view). It's a parody of the Apple switch ads, and it's about an American guy named John who "switches" to Canada. I found it via ni vu ni connu who found it on Emmanulle's blog who found it...well you get the picture...

While I'm posting this, I guess I'll spill that I used to be a huge Macintosh booster, until a powerful former employer forced me over to the Dark Side. A few Thinkpads and clone desktops later, I'm still a reluctant PC user, and I still have a soft spot for Macs. Taking this into consideration, then, it shouldn't be too surprising that I've always loved Apple ads.

Is that a bad thing for a Mass Communications student to say? That there is any advertising out there that I find enjoyable?

(We use Macs in class, so hopefully it's not too bad a confession and won't prevent me from getting that almighty-A for this project.)

My own favourite Apple switch ad is the one with Christmas-saving Janie Porche.

Do you have a favourite??

:: Open representations (Part I) ::

Absent Images

Having already posted a general overview of Stuart Hall's theory on representation in the media here, in this blogspace, I thought that for tonight's post, I'd apply some of those theories to the actual experience of blogging, both from a blogger's perspective and from a blogreader's perspective. Not so coincidentally, this topic will also be the focus of a presentation I'm doing in my COMZ class next week.

Note, though, that I've got the flu today and as such, the brain isn't firing on all cylinders. Thus, I think I'm going to do this blogpost as a series of related posts over the course of the next few days. Hopefully, I can setup the argument, the theory, the analysis and the examples in a way that makes sense in this representation of them.

++++++++++++++++++++

Diving into Stuart Hall's theories on representation of meaning in the mass media, I am quickly struck by his idea that there is no inherent meaning in a representation of an issue or opinion itself. While he speaks most often about representations through images, I don't see why this theory can't be applied to a textual representation, such as a blogpost.

Of course, the first notable thing about this is the overt lack of imagery in blogs, in general. It was one of the first things that struck me about the medium of blogging -- it doesn't have to be advertisement supported, and it lets the message reign supreme. The focus is on the text. Even most of the interfaces are clean and spare and simple; it is all intended to focus eyes on the posts and their messages.

Try it -- sideways surf through some of the blogs I've linked to at the left there and check it out...feel free to sideways surf to some of their links while you're there.....

Back? Did you see what I mean? No matter how many you go through, you note an absence of images, or at the very least, a seemingly deliberate restraint in their use and care in their selection.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the back end of blogging -- the way bloggers put out their messages and how that relates to this theory of an emphasis on the textual message.

:: Hacking and cyberterrorism ::

In the essaypost I made last week in this space, I mentioned hacking and the counter-reaction to it by the corporate netplaces and their overlords.

While that part of the essaypost was a minor contribution to the overall essay, I received a comment or two about that aspect in particular. One person asked if the subtext to my post meant that I condone or wish to glorify hacking. Someone else basically gave me a virtual two thumbs up. Different keystrokes for different folks, I guess.

As a result of the feedback, I thought I'd clarify my view. First of all, from the scholary perspective of the project that is the underlying reason for this blog, the morality of any online activity is irrelevant. Whether I think something is right or wrong, good or bad, has no place in my thesis or in the overall scope of my examination of the I-Space for this blogproject. Even later, when this blog is no longer part of a blogging-for-marks thing, I hope to avoid the polarization that providing a value judgement of someone's activity can cause. I particularly want to avoid the flaming -- I'm a pacifist at heart.

This is the ideal of course, and I understand that the possibility of having value judgements creep into my thinking and into my writing here is inevitable and must be accepted as par for the course. The only other option is to go back and edit the original essaypost, which, given that I've already done so once, begins to make the idea of essayblogging rather unusable.

So -- since a few of you have asked, here's my opinion....

:: disclaimer ::
This particular opinion should not be considered germane to the more academic nature of this blog - take it for what it is and know that I understand and accept your view may be different.

:: open opinion ::

Hacking for the pure thrill of it is not something that I advocate. I find it particularly reprehensible if hacking is done for the purposes of random malicious damage. Denial of service attacks, site defacements, phone phreaking, etc., are all undesirable if damage to people or information is caused as a result of the actions with no reason whatever than the fact that you can. It is the online equivalent of chopping down your neighbours tree, keying their car and breaking their picture window just because you had the axe, a key and a few rocks, as well as the urge to do it "just 'cause".

Hacking for a reason, be it to protest a corporation's policies or actions, point out the flaws in their security while doing nothing to their information resources, or to learn about cybersecurity in the goal of getting a job to prevent malicious hacking, this I find more palatable. The idea here is that nothing is actually harmed -- no damage is done and no true confidentiality is breached.

It is probably not a secret to anyone who knows me in the meatworld that I, personally, would love to see the virtual equivalent of the Whirlmart protests borne out online in a DOS attack of a blatantly sexist and commercialistic site or event, such as...oh...say....the slavering peepshow (a.k.a cyberfashion show) that happens one or twice a year at Victoria's Secret.

This kind of hacking can be called many things. The most common term that I know of is "white hat hacking", as in the idea of the "good" white-hatted cowboy facing off against the bad, usually black-hatted cowboy in the old westerns. I've also heard it called "hacktivism", which I think I prefer.

Regardless, though, the whole issue is a moral slipperly slope. Just as urban graffiti can be seen as one person's damage and another person's art, the same metaphor could be applied to hacktivism as well. The line is thin indeed.

What I find more disturbing in general is the traditional media's usual kneejerk reaction to hacking as something that is evil, immoral and wrong, wrong, wrong, no matter what. If one digs deeper into the stories and sideways-surfs to a bunch of sites related to the topic, the whole morass starts to resemble a bit of a Certeau-esque strategy of the forces of domination to control the individual's view. I hear echoes of the old propaganda that advocates against individuals or groups who don't toe the current, "spend spend buy buy" passive mode of the online place. I see an aspect of disinformation at worst, or one-sided reporting at best.

:: close opinion ::

As many of the balanced news items about hacking will point out, the only thing that is usually liable to get hurt by a hacking event is data, not people.

Does this mean that I justify it? Again, I don't advocate for either role.

To find out more yourself, go check out a recent well-written post about the topic of hacking and cyberterrorism that was posted on The Washington Monthly Online recently...I found it through a link today in The Literacy Weblog.

I do try to remember that there are always multiple sides to every issue. Digesting information with a critical mind is the key here (note I use critical in the old world sense of a "detailed examination and review", per Webster's Unabridged Dictionary)Just because the corporate media provide one slant on a topic does not make that slant to be the truth. We all have to dig a bit deeper, evaluate and query the text or images, and be willing to use alternative resources to get a more 360 degree view of the topic beforemaking up our minds about something. In doing so, we expand our mindsets and can see the possibly deliberate or unintional closures of representation more clearly.

Stories and resources about hacking:
The thin gray line (CNET.com)
E-Terrorism: Digital myth or true threat? (News.com)
Underground and Hacker sites (Searchsecurity.com grouped links)
The Myth about Cyberterrorism (The Washington Monthly Online)


As always, your opinion on this post or this blog are welcome.

:: Ever have one of those moments? ::

I call them "Eureka!" moments, so-named for the expression I might consider using aloud when I have one of those brain clicks, in which all the miscellaneous parts of a puzzle that I didn't know my brain was even working on suddenly all seem to fall in place. I usually feel my vision get clearer, my heart start to race, my eyes widen. Thoughts race, testing out the new clarity of understanding, of illumination. If it all works, if any of my tests still fit into the hypotheses or brain click I've had, I will usually grin like the proverbial Cheshire Cat, pick up my walking pace and utter wonderingly out loud a single word....

"wow!"

Many things can bring these on for me. Often, it's because I've read something that has...resonated...that's the best word I can think of. It's resonated with me, somehow. Other things, though, that seem completely trivial and should not lead to this kind of a brain click, should seem unimportant and unremarkable, can also lead to one of these moments.

It's like a chain reaction, the newly-acquired idea butting up against existing ideas, information, guesses and questions and forming an entirely new idea, a moment of brain clarity so sweet, so sharp, so...real...that I want to jump and shout and proclaim to the world....

....well....something. Sometimes profane, sometimes not. Of course, doing so would be liable to get me some very strange or worried stares from the people around me.

I have the incredibly strong urge to share it. And often can't. For any number of reasons.

Ever had one of these moments?

:: Nothing new ::

I admit it. I'm spent. There is no blogging rush left in me today.

After creating that monster blogpost essay on Saturday night, working all weekend on a political sociology paper for tonight's class, and making a few minor modifications (properly annotated of course -- I follow the Weblog Code of Ethics) to the aforementioned essay, I'm blogged out.

Perhaps tonight's class will refresh the brain and recharge it, giving me a few ideas to post here later.

Perhaps not.

Thus, go easy on me if I don't get anything other than this drivel post up for today.

Instead, go read the essay I wrote and posted here on Saturday night. It felt good putting it up.

I'll blog again tomorrow.

:: Reading for fun, not marks ::


While diving into various blogs today, I followed a link from Jessa Crispin's Bookslut to a book review website called Bookmunch.

Wow! I've just spent one hour and hundreds of dollars (in my head, anyway) on wonderful books, based on Bookmunch reviews. My hubby will probably walk out on me though if I spend one more loonie at Amazon.ca or Indigo.ca on books (before Christmas anyway).

Perhaps I should add in a little section over there on the left that says what I'm reading now and what I'm hoping to read next, like I've seen on Rebecca Blood's blog or on Bookslut.

I have to say that I can completely identify with the term "bookslut". It completely describes me. Now if only I had time away from my sociology and mass communications required reading from Concordia to spend reading the increasing stack of books for fun that I'm accumulating. I'm jonesing to read Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, At Swim Two Boys or re-read Factoring Humanity and Snow Crash.

When is my next vacation?

:: A little subjective Internet history ::

In addition to my COMZ360 course, I'm taking a Sociology course on "Political Sociology", numbered SOCI333. Thus, today, I've been reading an article from my coursepack, specifically chapter 2 from Establishing Democracies about the rise of the U.S. democracy from what was supposed to be a constitutional republic.

Rather than ponder what this all means to the U.S. system of government however, or even about the various aspects of political structures in the physical world, I've been thinking about how it all applies to the I-Space. Also, rather than write the summary of the article as I'm supposed to do, for tomorrow evening's class, I have instead felt compelled to write the following essay...perhaps it is relevant to the aims of my project, perhaps not. In any case, here it is in its long (and probably slightly pompous and weird) entirety.

Don’t hesitate to tell me what you think of it or offer up corrections of any factual errors I've made.

Writer's Note: A few minor changes made 11/18/2002 in response to reader feedback/commentary. Deletions are marked with strikeout text, additions are very few, around the centre of the essay.

++++++++++++++++++++


The Internet as phoenix:

The rise and fall and rise again of the personal I-Space

Originally, the Internet was a republic, governed by the universities and the U.S. government. By the provision of bandwidth and the free sharing of technical innovation, each university contributed to the greater good that was the Internet of the pre-image days. They shared research data, collaborated on cross-university projects and chatted together through individual chat boxes in the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or sent one-on-one message missives called "Electronic Mail".

With the creation of the browser, of basic HTML and the advent of paid public access, the Internet was briefly (and gloriously, in my opinion) an egalitarian participatory anarchy. Netizens openly used the technologies of the time to connect, communicate and commune with their fellows. They managed themselves according to rules they themselves put in place, that they enforced on themselves and encouraged in others. Here was the rise of the standards of "netiquette", with its ideas of preserving the peace and the bandwidth for everyone to use to their own ends and pleasures. Here were the beginnings of the personal I-Space, vast arrays of websites created for the enjoyment of their owners, containing minute details about lives lived, dreams dreamed, and desires desired or achieved. Here were the origins of the blogosphere.

As HTML and the browser emerged, early-adopting corporations began to understand the possibilities of promoting themselves online. Early websites didn't sell things as much as promote the company itself. They were selling their own "brand", their own image and preferred way to operate. What had started as an experimental free-for-all expression of personal ability morphed into an outcry against the takeover of the online place by corporations.

Search engine companies went public.

The aptly-named Amazon emerged.

Hobbyist Internet service providers who were in it for the fun and the small dollars founds themselves unable to compete with deliberately money-losing giant "providers" and were forced to choose between extinction or selling their tightly-loyal membership-based online communities to dispassionate corporate entities who were in it for the money. They sold out, in droves. Members, in turn, became numbers or "users" overnight. Their new ISP lords stripped them of their ability to voice a say in the workings of their online world, deemed them a faceless mob that was inherently devoid of personality, of individuality. The lords were in it for the buck, not the community.

At the very top were the enormous telecoms and the increasingly dynastic operating system company from Redmond, WA. Individuals and non-profit groups began to get squeezed out to the fringes of the cyberplace. Online advertising arose and got steadily more obnoxious and intrusive. Imagery was everywhere, but most of it was meaningless shills for corporate monoliths.

Echoes of fascism began to emerge.

Technology continued its steady, relentless pace forward, only now it was yoked to the eyeballs and dollars movement. As the Internet technologies became more and more complicated, it became near impossible to do anything online without a legion of highly-skilled, highly-paid programmers and designers behind the scenes. Individuals who were neither found the new tech baffling, difficult and near-impossible to figure out or master. They began to lose space to the corporations, who flaunted their budgets and the technical prowess they bought and paid for. Virtual fences and walls emerged. Individuals slipped and were pushed out even further to the absolute outer fringes. of cyberspace.

Reaction against this encroaching online corporatization and domination was small but fierce -- the idea of "hacking" began to arise. Whereas previously hacking was simply a benign way for intelligent computer users to test their skills and maybe gain a few hours of free access time in the process, it morphed into a demonstration of the seemingly powerless against the powerful. It became a type of tactical outcry against the walling off of the previously public online place. Tactics ranging from outright hacks of corporate systems to simple site defacements began to get more common.

It was not long before the counter-reaction by corporations came along. Hackers, those freewheeling experimenters of the early days of the netspace were re-cast by the controlling online corporations as dangerous criminals who were detrimental to the online place. They were billed as contaminators of an online world that had become all about eyeballs and dollars, all about lining the pockets of the powerful few at the expense of the previously organic and self-sufficient online communities of the majority. The gavel fell. They were outcast, verboten, no longer welcome in the neat, bright, colourful and identical online places owned and controlled by the corporations. Bleeding but not beaten, they reluctantly assumed their enforced label of "criminal" and went underground, to simmer and emote anger in seclusion, on the fringes and underspaces of the corporatized Internet.

Aided by the early adopter corporations, the shopping cart metaphor emerged. Divorced from the physicality of a wired-and-wheeled conveyance for products, little virtual shopping cart icons began popping up everywhere, urging and exorting net "consumers" to "pick and click", to "spend, baby, spend" ... to "Whip out the credit card and give us your money!"

Bricks and mortar stores began referring to themselves as "clicks and mortar" as they stampeded over one another to go online. "www" became the new status mark for overfed, babied corporate brands.

The Virtual Gold Rush had begun.

The dot-com world boomed. People got rich. Life online became all about how much money you could made and how fast you could make it. The founding ideals of the netspace, that of selfless sharing, frontier experimentation and civic responsibility became subsumed to the race for the buck, the concept of finding the next big idea that would zoom to the top, let you go public, then laugh your way to the bank as the multitudes flocked to buy both your products online and your worthless stocks offline.

Many of us sold out and were applauded for it. Those of us who held back and commented in dismay at the state of the online world and the depths to which it had sunk were treated as pariahs, quacks, doomsayers and cowards. More of us turned our back in defeat and gave up on the online world.

The personal I-Space, forced off to the fringe of the online place, continued to struggle and flourish. The personal space sites that gave them voice either died or went corporate. Maintaining a personal space for one's own pleasures was made more difficult by the increasing proliferation of online advertising forced on to them by their newly corporate space providers. In order to continue to have a voice online, many individual netizens were forced to accept a glut of obnoxious ads onto their personal spaces, ads that were neither of their choosing nor of their desire. Subjugated, they accepted their powerlessness and bowed to their dictators.

Not all, however, gave in so easily.

Enter the blog. A small movement at first, the creation of tools by fellow bloggers that enabled them to maintain their sites in a quick and easy fashion without the need to worry about detailed HTML allowed the medium and method to merge. The blogosphere exploded.

It now exists as a space that is distinct from the corporate online place that surrounds it. At once intensely personal and openly public, the medium of blogging has allowed individuals to regain a voice online, without needing to sell out, corporatize or otherwise kneel down to the dominant corporate controlling forces online.

In organization, it most closely resembles a socialist republic, with the idea of acting for the good of all and with the notion that if one blog or one blogtool provider displeases or transgresses, the rest of the blogosphere can "vote with their mice" and click over to other spaces, ignoring them. Exercised judiciously, it engenders a kind of self-governance, a sort of socially-conscious democratic ideal of one for all.

The blogosphere does not depend on eyeballs and dollars to survive. It is voluntary, based on labours of love or passion or purpose or conviction.

To date, most bloggers willingly follow the unofficial code of ethics. As the medium and its messages change, so too (probably) will the guiding ethics adapt and change with it. The blogosphere is living changing proof that the I-Space is a perpetual phoenix, rising and falling to rise again, ever changing, yet strangely constant.

Will it survive? Can it last? I don't know. Much depends on what's next, whether or not the new technologies and methodologies and memes can be organically integrated into the blogosphere. It also may depend on size – is there such a thing as too big a space, too many blogs in the blogosphere, ultimate power to control and dicate the Internet by a single corporation?

I don't have the answers. I'm still caught in the mode of asking questions. What I do know is that I've found new meaning and pleasure and hope through the blogosphere, through being a blogger, through being part of the online space, with its self-governing systems and ever-changing technologies. It's a weird place to be at times, but I'm glad I'm part of it.

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If you have an opinion on this post, share it with me.

:: Designing an inclusive I-Space ::

A colleague at work sent me a link to a story on ITworld.ca about designing accessible websites for disabled persons.

The gist of the story is the idea that all corporate entities who are in the business of selling products and services should not ignore any sector of the population, regardless of their potential disabilities, such as blindness. Additionally, it is critical of web designers and coders who ignore W3C accessibility standards in their designs and code.

Reading this story, I have to wonder the myriad of possible ramifications if the ADA laws were applied to the online place....

...Would it mean more elegant, tighter-coded spaces?
...Or would it just mean scope creep and yet another reason for corporations to not go online?
...And what would the impact to individual spaces, such as those in the blogosphere, be from such laws?
...How would enforcement of an essentially American law be managed cross-borders, given the innately global nature of the net?
...What is the impact on me, as a Canadian, if I wish to sell to Americans?
...If I explicitly state I don't wish to have Americans use my online space or online corporate place, would I still have to comply if a single disabled American stumbles across my site and complains?

Using Hall's concepts..

...are disabled persons being "silenced in the production of images" online because of the way in which images are setup and presented?

Using De Certeau's ideas...

...Does the choice of web designers and programmers to ignore the W3C standards in favour of their own style of coding, designing or adherence to a technical platform suite (most usually Microsoft) denote a corporate "strategy" in the De Certeau sense?

Many questions to which I don't yet have answers or suggestions, but which are worth pondering if the idea of having a completely inclusive I-Space is deemed a worthy goal.

:: Seeing is believing ::

With my head stuffed full of Noam Chomsky and the book version of "Manufacturing Consent", I headed off to my COMZ 360 class tonight, expecting to discuss the power issues between traditional media and the “ordinary people”, as Chomsky calls all of us.

Instead, I had my mind opened to the potentially positive power of imagery.

During tonight’s class, we saw an excellent film called “Seeing is Believing” by Canadian documentary filmmaker and Concordia University alumni, Peter Wintonick. Just off the 2002 film festival circuit, Wintonick himself came into our class to provide an introduction and a viewing of the film, something that is apparently getting to be a bit of a privilege, as Wintonick gets more well-known around the world.

This movie deals with the equalizing effect that handheld camcorders have on individual ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations. Wintonick deals with the issue that the written word is losing its power and the image is taking over.

This is particularly noticeable in the film when various interviewed people speak of the loss of powers of influence traditionally found within first person accounts of events. Instead, this verbal or written testimonial to the goings-on in places as diverse as Indonesia, Chechnya, Czech Republic and Wales is increasingly being given over to the audio and video recorded image. Though the handheld video camera, individuals are able to document and distribute imagery that pierces the darkness of propaganda to highlight their own realities.

The film clearly illustrates that the power of imagery can be used by groups like Witness to affect change in human rights scenarios globally.

After the film was aired in-class, we had a lecture and discussion with Peter Wintonick himself. Very illuminating, especially his concepts of cinema verite, the power of documentary film-making and how he came to this point in his life in which he could make this film.

All in all, it gave weight to Stuart Hall’s theories, per my post yesterday. I will certainly have to keep some of Wintonick's more salient points in mind as I continue this exploration of the I-Space, to see if they can be applied to the online context.

++++++++++++++++++++

In order to appreciate the scope of Peter Wintonick’s work, I urge you to…
…Read an interview with Wintonick about the power of documentaries
…Find out more about the film, “Seeing is Believing”
…Learn about the links between Wintonick and Chomsky

:: Representation in imagery ::

I have been promising an overview of Stuart Hall’s ideas of the politics of imagery and ideas on representation and the media.

I’ll give a brief general overview of his theories today and then I’ll get into a more detailed analysis of it as it relates to the I-Space later this coming weekend.

Hall rejects the old view that the truth of something is represented in a distorted way through the imagery chosen by the media. Whereas traditional views believed there was a gap between “true reality” and its copied or “represented” self in the mediums used by mass media, Hall says instead that imagery has no innate view or representation in and of itself until it is viewed or consumed by someone. In this way, the representation doesn’t happen after the fact, but is instead constitutive of the event itself.

Hall says that, as a result, there is no single essential truth to anything. Instead, many meanings are possible based on the overall manner in which an event is represented.

He goes on to say that that meanings arise out of conceptual cultural maps or typologies, in which language and discourse are key. Using language and a cultural lense or filter, humans interpret the meaning of an event based on its representation in an image.

The danger, however, is that power and ideology attempt to fix meaning, lock down meaning in a certain narrow representation, thereby ignoring its fluidity and natural state of flux.

Closure, then, in the Hall sense, is the idea of closing out other representations of an image in order to position a single fixed meaning as the only or ultimate meaning of a representation.

So the three things that are at stake in representation are new knowledge, new identities and new meanings.

The central questions, then, to media analysis using Hall’s views are as follows:

• Who has the power, in what channel, to circulate which meanings to whom?


• Where do images come from?


• Who produces images?


• How is meaning closed in the representation?


• Who is silenced in the production of images?

Using these questions and the ideas of what is at stake in representation, I will apply them against examples culled from the I-Space in general and the blogosphere specifically in order to test the merits of this form of analysis in highlighting the power struggles in the search for meanings and pleasures here, online.

++++++++++++++++++++

(Because Hall can be difficult for a new Communications student to understand and dissect unaided, I must gratefully acknowledge the COMZ 360 course handout on Stuart Hall’s lectures of “Representation and the Media” for the ideas presented in this post. Much of this post is a summary or paraphrase of this handout.)

:: Enforced break from blogging ::

Left Saturday. Fly back tonight. Out of net range until tomorrow.

Will post new stuff tomorrow night, including, hopefully, an analysis of Stuart Hall's ideas of representation.

Don't hestitate to email me. Doing the survey (from last Saturday's wee hours post) would be most helpful.

Take care and surf safe.

:: It has begun ::

I started sending out my survey tonight to various bloggers, including all of the ones in my left-hand links.

The only criterion is that the blog has to be real and has to be managed by an individual or individuals -- no corporate blogs for this one.

Here are the questions I'm asking...feel free to cut and paste them and send them on to bloggers you know, with instructions to mail them back to me. I ask only that you CC me on anything you send out to anyone you know.

++++++++++++++++++++
The survey

• What was the inspiration behind your blog?


• How many regular readers/members do you have? (just numbers only are needed, though you're welcome to provide more info if you choose)
• Does your readership generate a lot of email for you? What are the main general topics of email you receive as a result of your blog?


• How has the experience been so far in managing your blog? How much time does it take weekly/monthly?


• What are the motives for maintaining blog? i.e. Profit/personal pleasure/idea of community?


• If profit, what scale do you wish? Modest living? Multi-millionaire? Had success in this to date?


• If pleasure, what meaning or pleasure do you derive from owning/managing this site?


• If for community, how has your experience of community-building online been to date?


• Are the technologies and tools currently available sufficient to your goals and desires for your blog?


• If you could do the whole thing over again, what, if anything, would you change about the Internet or about your experiences within it, both as a blogger and as a "netizen"?


• May I quote you publicly in my blog, "I-Space" and in the eventual project website, Com-Text.org?



Please note that your responses may be paraphrased or used verbatim in the accompany essay which will be handed into my professor.

++++++++++++++++++++
Any assistance from fellow bloggers in helping me gather the info for this survey would be wonderful.

That's it. I'm off to New Jersey for a few days on a dual business/pleasure trip. I'll post again late Sunday night and check my email then as well.
Hopefully this can get this project steaming along.

:: A new addition... ::

I added another blogspace from the blogosphere to add to my growing list of frequent reads.

Check it out...
No Watermelons Allowed

:: The more I change… ::


I had my mass communications class tonight, the one for which I'm doing this blog. As part of the marking strategy for this class, each student has to do a ten minute presentation, in which they are supposed to analyze an example or sets of examples from a type of media within a certain medium.

(My own is set to happen during the very last class of the semester...three weeks to go...The topic? Blogs, of course!)

Now, normally I keep my mouth shut in such situations and don't directly criticize other students' work openly during the class itself. It's kind of my own version of the Golden Rule (do unto... etc. etc.). Tonight, though, I broke the rule. Badly.

Why?

One of the students got up to speak about "peer to peer" technologies through the Internet. In other words, file-swapping. And rather than do an analysis of the medium of file swapping and how the media close out the people who use file swapping technologies for non-illegal or non-illicit purposes in the media’s representations on this subject, this student proceeded to demonize the format, cut down the Internet as a medium, while simultaneously somehow managing to glorify the "illicitness" of file swapping for music, software etc.

All of it within a set of value judgments that had no place or purpose within the argument. Oh...and they got the theory wrong (De Certeau's concepts of space and place and containment).

Now...before I continue on this topic, I should point out that I have a soft spot for the online medium, in case you hadn’t already noticed that fact. This blog is proof. I am also guilty of sometimes trying to "own" this topic when out in the meatworld discussing it with others. I get proprietorial and protective of it as a topic and I am not as open-minded sometimes as I know I should be.

This may be what happened today. I'm not exactly sure. What I do know is that, all of a sudden, when this student introduced their topic, I noticeably *perked*…and then just as quickly deflated, then hardened, as they setup the topic. I had a definite problem with the way this student framed it,. In essence, I began to feel they were demonizing the Internet and were leaving out large parts of factual evidence that would otherwise have torn their argument apart and rendered it useless.

I won’t go into detail on the content of their presentation. The actual content is possibly irrelevant to my issue with it. The sad truth is that, during the last half of this presentation, I was biting my lip and partially hiding the person from view with my hands, physical indicators to me that I’m trying to keep a lid on it, trying to keep my mouth shut and my brain disengaged from an argument it desperately wants me to make, preferably out loud.

I was doing okay until the Q&A session afterwards, until the student responded to another student’s question/challenge.

Then I lost it…

I spoke…

I was a fool.

I should have kept my mouth shut. My passion for the topic was entirely too evident and my lack of good reasoning argument and of an ability to express a 360 degree view of the issue was completely evident in my response. I proceeded to point out why the missing factual evidence invalidated the student’s argument, why they themselves had just committed the cardinal sin of Cultural Studies by deliberately framing an issue to exclude various representations of it, and I went on to speak about who was silenced in their representation of the topic.

An awful lot of stuff to say for someone who wanted to practice the Golden Rule and keep her mouth shut.

I tried to make amends to the student afterwards, but flubbed that too, it seems.

I learned from this tonight. I learned that I’m very testy about people speaking about the Internet in ways that I interpret to be misguided, factually incorrect or just narrow-minded. I learned that I can still be overtly impetuous, after years of trying to be otherwise, in ways that can come back to bite me in the butt. I learned that my need to make sure others understand the view I espouse as “right” can still overpower my desire to be egalitarian, inclusive, socially considerate.

Most especially, though, I learned through my own actions that I, too, can be guilty of shutting people out of my own representation and image of what the I-Space is, or should be. By speaking up tonight the way I did against my fellow student in our class, I am guilty of hypocrisy.

Sobering realization, these.

Sobering, and perhaps pertinent to my exploration of this notion of framing, representation and the nature of reality within the I-Space.

:: Nothing new left to write about? ::

Some of my fellow proud Montrealers have been especially proud of their city-status lately, since the Mann Booker prize for 2002 went to a Montrealer, Yann Martel. Thus, I suppose it is possible that they are going to moan and then skewer me for writing this entry...

I can't help but wonder why a talented writer like Martel would want to "borrow" or "be inspired" by the main plot device of another writer, equally well-known in his own home country??

The New York Times published a piece today pulling apart the issue of Martel's recent Booker-award-winning novel "the Life of Pi" and its similarities and "inspirations" derived from Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar's novel, "Max and the Cats".

Martel openly admits to it in an author's note on the used bookseller, Powells.

Somehow, John Updike gets dragged into this all too. Curiouser and curiouser.

:: And now we pause for a short message ::

No analysis or links or hypothesis today. I just don't have the brain cells left over.

Right now, I'm working on the questions for my bloggers "meanings and pleasures" survey and am compiling a list of the people to whom I'll send it out. I also want to watch the second episode of 24 (I confess -- I'm a Kiefer fan).

So....you get a break from reading me today.

Why not go have some fun online?

Until tomorrow...

:: Whiners? ::

I read an article this weekend in the local paper reprinted from Canadian Press that reported Pat Buchanan saying that Canada is a "Soviet Canukistahn" and that Canadians are "whiners".

While wondering how to post a properly reflective something about this, I came across Rob's Nov 1/2002 post (scroll down - it's the one below the big maple leaf).

Two different sides to the story. I'm still trying to find another though, preferably refuting Buchanan but from an American's perspective.

While you're on Rob's site, pause and scroll down the page a bit for a comedic break. Read (or re-read) the lyrics to the excellent "I am Canadian" rant from the now-famous Molson Canadian beer commercial.

A plea: If you have a link to the aforementioned beer commercial where it can be viewed online, please send it to me. I want to present this commercial in class for critical analysis.

:: Other ideas about the I-Space ::


Found an amazing essay tonight while sideways-surfing during a break from writing my own essay/project(see Nov. 3 posts).

Had two feelings related to it…


1) Awe. This sum ups the reasons I'm studying to be a cyberculture sociologist.
and
2) Envy. I wish I'd written it.

Here’s an excerpt:

"If each of us were to catalog our own human experience and make it available on the web, we could lend to each other an omnipotence unattainable prior to the existence of the Net. We could take events in our own lives, which have mystified us since their occurrence, and search the web for similar encounters. We could compare and contrast other's experiences and draw deeper meaning into our own experience. We might too, find the one piece of information that will transform an experience we had nearly forgotten into a life changing moment which has been waiting years to unfold.

Using the Web, we could study humanity in a way unavailable to us prior to the existence of the Net. We could take a cross section of the human experience, revealing different layers of expression provided by other examinations of a particular experience. We could collect individual accounts of such experiences and benefit from the various levels of analysis drawn from religion, mythology or archetype, as well as wholly uneducated or raw versions of the experience. And we could track the experience across boundaries of age, gender, era, and culture. The Web may provide us with a way to transcend our current and limited spheres of knowledge to grasp a further and deeper understanding of what it means to be human and to be alive."

Read the whole essay!

:: found among Derek Powazek's theories on weblogs ::

:: Getting around the place of containment ::


This post is written essay-style. It is intended to deal with the theory at the heart of my project. As such, the language and topic is a bit academic.

Hopefully, though, it is still accessible. If you disagree, let me know.


A key tenet in De Certeau's concepts is the idea of a "place of containment" owned by the "forces of domination" who uses "strategies" to gain and maintain power that is intended to keep the powerless controlled and contained.

Central to my argument that bloggers are re-appropriating the Internet in order to create an I-Space for their own meanings and pleasures is the idea that the cyber "place of containment" is the corporatized Internet.

Note that I use the term "corporatized" in the sense of "for profit".

Thus, I posit that the rise of the corporatized net had closed off or silenced various groups and individuals who, previously, were front and centre online. This included intellectuals, artists, students and hobbyists.

A primary strategy of the dominants has been the need for space creators to be ever more technical in order to create space and voice online. As HTML morphed into XML, basic scripting morphed into Java scripting, simple imagery became Flash and pseudo-interactivity, the demands of the technology served the corporatized net’s agenda by closing out the individual and moving the corporations, with their endless store of resources, to the heart of the cyberplace.

The individual was never expected to be able to learn or master the new, wide range of technologies needed to create their own I-Space from which they could attempt to gain prominent voice online. Thus were they contained or silenced, kept in the place set aside for them by the dominants, out on the fringes of the I-Space.

It is my observation and assertion that in the online place that was the pre-blog Internet, the increasing demands for more imagery, more sound, more motion reflected, not the dreams of the individual, but rather the desires of the dominants. Using this pseudo-motion online to represent them, the dominants were able to minimalize text-only voice and reduce the previously active netizens to a passive audience of consumers who obediently and willingly gave their eyeballs and dollars to the dominants, feeding the dominants profits as a result.

(There is an intersection here between Michel De Certeau’s theories and language, and that of Stuart Hall, with his ideas on imagery. I will explore and explain this intersection at a later point.)

This hunger for profit on the part of the dominants led to the rise of many insidious online practices that are now common, such as banner advertising, intrusive pop-ups, and “pay for display” search engine positioning. Eyeballs, not ideas, became central.

It lead to the positioning of the Internet as a place for commerce, rather than a space for community, a place for shopping carts instead of a space for conversation, a place of passivity rather than a space for activity. Dollars, rather than discourse, became prime.

I argue however, that blogs are changing this. While the ideas behind blogging aren’t new, and there have always been areas available in the pre-blog era (such as Geocities and Tripod), these spaces were bought up by corporations, moved to the fringe of the cyberworld and once again put to use for eyeballs and dollars.

Have you visited a personal website on Tripod recently? With the many and varied advertising strategies perennially popping up at you with each click of your mouse, individuals’ words which constitute voice online are drowned out in the cacophony of marketing-related images that beg you to click away from the individual voices and back to the controlled for-profit centres.

In other cases, such as The Globe, the two conflicting desires for corporate place around individual space clashed, and the individuals’ spaces were silenced when the corporate place failed to create enough profit to continue its existence.

Being human, we notice imagery before we notice words, simply because the colour inherent in imagery catches the eye in a way a word cannot. In this way, the corporatized place stays predominant to the viewer of the personal site, keeps the individual’s words contained in their space according to the dominants’ strategies.

I believe that this is changing, as a result of the birth of the blog. Through blogs, individuals are once again able to creatively commute the technology resources to their purpose. Their online space can once again be based on the active process of choosing and generating meanings and pleasures, in their own words, through devices of their own choosing, within communities of their own creation.

They are able to route around the places of containment online to once again bring discourse and community to the fore. They have reclaimed their voice and created their own I-Space within the corporatized online place.

Want to discuss the theories and ideas in this post? Send me a note.

::Meanings and pleasures::

While in the process of writing the survey that I'm going to start sending out to various bloggers this week, I realized that I needed to define what I mean when I use the terms "meanings" and "pleasures".

Then I thought, why not define it here, so that if anyone is actually reading this and is willing to stand up and be counted in this experiment of mine, they (you?) can understand my vocabulary.

Both terms originate with De Certeau's theory on the practice of everyday life.

The "meaning" is the "why" of an experience, as in "why do you do it?" It is the intent, the reason behind the method chosen and its subsequent execution, the driving force behind the action.

The "pleasure" is the "what" of the experience, as in "what's in this for me?" It is the payoff, the result of the action, the personalized reaction to the activity in which you engaged.

I should point out that pleasure is not necessarily emotional, despite the origins of the word. Receiving monetary payment for something could be defined by you as a pleasure. Semantically, it could be argued that the money itself isn't the pleasure, the feeling you get when you receive it is, but that splits it a bit too fine for my purposes. Especially when I am dealing with cyber-reality in the I-Space.

:: Biting the bullet ::


In order to actually be able to actually make a convincing argument à la De Certeau that bloggers use the net for their own meanings and pleasures, I need to prove it.

Big deal you say? I say yes. Why?

A quick scan of any collection of blogs would allow me to infer through the blogs’ content that the vast majority of bloggers do it for the love of it. Reading any number of books, including The Weblog Handbook will offer up opinions to me on why bloggers blog.

Still though, for my purposes, that isn’t first-hand enough, it isn’t real enough. I need to actually interact with the bloggers themselves, with the people behind the sites. I need to find out who they are, why they blog, what they get out of it and what keeps them blogging.

So here’s the dilemma - What kind of response do you figure most good, established bloggers will give me if I send out an email (personal of course, not chain or broadcast style) asking for this kind of info and telling them it is for a university project?

My guess? Silence.

Yes, I'm afraid it will be treated like spam and discarded.

Still and all, I guess I'd better try and bite the bullet.

Will it be ****-off or feedback? I’d best start finding out – the project is due beginning of December.

:: Big Brother is watching? ::

Unintentional irony, alive and well in the UK. Check it out.
:::found via MemeMachine -1-Nov-02:::

:: Blogging for marks ::

Okay, project. Must remember that this blog is for a project.

I'm finding the lure to slip into a general pondering mode in this space to be almost overpowering. Seductive thing, this blogging. If I could just stop here and declare my project over, I'd still be able to discuss (to a point) the meanings and pleasures that I've gotten out of it.

But in actuality, I can't do that.

Must.....resist....temptation....

:: So just what _is_ a blog, anyway?::

Paralysis and worry has set in.

As I surf sideways through dozens of blogs, jumping from one to another, I'm struck by just how dissimilar they are. Call me naive, if you want, but somehow, when I started this project, I had the silly impression that most blogs would kind of be the same...pithy observances of the media, the net and their personal lives, posted in reverse chronological order, with tons of links to other sites just like themselves.

Needless to say, that isn't the case, as I've discovered. The hard way. There's journalism blogs, personal diary blogs, link clearinghouses, stream of consciousness blogs, blogging-for-profit blogs, flogging-my-blog blogs...the list of differences seem endless.

Case in point ….(cue refrain from the famous Sesame Street song)…

What do these three have in common other than that they all are blogs of some kind?

Nowarblog.org
Pickupyourowndamnsocks!
Starkdavingmad

Answer? Nothing, to my eyes.

Now what?

Drat.