I-Space

:: 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.

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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.

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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.