Een week lang fiks verkouden en vandaag voor het eerst weer een ritje, al ben ik nog snotterig. Heerlijk oktoberweer, erg zacht, wel een harde zuidenwind maar als de zon door de wolken komt (soms) is het bijna zomers. Kanne – Eben – Halembaye – Haccourt – Hermalle ss Argenteau – Wixhou – Richelle – Feneur – Dalhem – Warsage – Gravensvoeren – Moelingen – Lixhe – Lanaye – Kanne

Just now read Jodi Dean’s paper on blogging for Hyperpolis. Very good, makes quite a few points I would’ve liked to make. I hope it’s allright with her that I already ‘reblog’ & pick some quotes (btw, these quotes do not capture her main point really):

“To be sure, words beyond control are a noted feature of writing. Academics, journalists, and bookwriters have long been familiar with the ways our words take on a life of their own. Blogging accentuates this new life. It makes more people aware of the ways that their words are not theirs.”

“Bloggers imagine communities. In part, they mark this imagining with their link lists. Yet, these lists are as (if not more) changing, uncertain, and porous as any other border.”

“My experience with blogs is that they allow for slower reflection, the emergence of spaces of affinity through specialized writing, and the experience of a presentation and cultivation of a self. These three attributes of blogs—reflection, affinity, self-cultivation—necessarily traverse the old liberal division of the world into public and private spheres.”

“A critical theory of blogging cannot extend out of presumptions of journalism, punditry, and relations to mainstream media. Instead, it has to begin from the communicative practices specific to blogging, practices that install confrontations with difference, with otherness.”

From Jodi Dean, Blogging Difference, 2006, paper for Hyperpolis, see http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/10/blogging_differ.html.

With regard to the last point I cite here — basically Jodi Dean’s conclusion — I agree in principle that yes, a critical theory of blogging should start with looking at communicative practices that are specific to blogging. But there are various types of blogs: some are focussed on conversations, some (like that of Jodi Dean) are indeed confrontations with the other (but isn’t all talk, and all writing in a sense a confrontation with otherness?) And then there are also the blogs, (notably some early ones) that are not conversational at all, that do not even want the confrontation, or who prefer to not even look at comments, if there are any. (Hey, why do I write this here and not in the comments of Jodi Dean’s blog? That characterizes me…. — supposing that trackbacking does the job?). Two extremes: there’s the blog as ‘my turf’, ‘my voice’ — and there’s the blog as an invitation to chat. And on a lot of blogs there’s not much ‘otherness’ of ‘confrontation’ going on… I should say that Jodi Dean tackles this issue as well in her paper (and looks at how a blog is also ‘me talking’), yet she emphasises the confrontation with otherness where I’d put more emphasis on the ‘publish for no public’-aspect.

Weer een schitterende oktoberdag, zon en 24 graden: korte mouwenweer. Te mooi om geen halve vakantiedag te nemen en nog een keer in het Hertogenwoud te gaan kijken. 12.30 – 18.15. Kanne – Lanaye – Moelingen – Gravensvoeren – St. Martensvoeren – Veurs – Veursbos – La Clouse – Clermont – Limbourg – Goe – Herbiester – La Gileppe – Limbourg – Henri- Chapelle – Hombourg – Remersdael – Mabroek – Reesberg – St. Pietersvoeren – St. Martensvoeren – Gravensvoeren – Moelingen – Lanaye – Kanne

23 graden, weinig wind, zon. Zomer in oktober. 15.30 – 18.15. Rustig-aan-rondje. Kanne – Eben – Halembaye – Loen – Haccourt – kanaal – Hermalle ss Argenteau – Richelle – Dalhem – Mortroux – Bois de Mauhin – Houliquette – Val Dieu – Aubel – De Plank – Ulvend – St. Martensvoeren – Moelingen – Lixhe – Lanaye – Kanne

Prachtig weer, mijn favoriete weer: oktober gouden zon, 18 graden, (eerst wat ochtendkoelte, later iets warmer, na afloop zelfs nog in de tuin gezeten), beetje zuidenwind. 11.00 – 16.45. De hele dag in de zon door de Hesbaye gereden en zelfs nog een stel niet eerder gereden klims gedaan (bij Jehay en Engins en bij Glons (!)). Paar keer wat zitten dwalen en bijvoorbeeld bij Flone afgedaald, omgekeerd & weer omhoog. Kanne – Eben – Halembaye – Heure L’Romaine – Fexhe – Juprelle – Xhendremael – Hognoul – Fooz – Voroux-Goreux – Lexhy – Awirs – Engins – Stockay – St Georges Sur Meuse – Jehay – Flone (v.v.) – Stockay – St. Georges – Sur le Bois – Awirs – Lexhy – Fexhe les Clochers – Freloux – Kemexhe – Odeur – Villers “Eveque – Othee – Wihoigne – Paifve – Glons – Bassenge – Eben – Kanne.

Wat een rijkdom, zelfs als je maar een uurtje hebt (voor donker), kun je een mooi rondje maken met drie klims en verschillende uitzichten op de ondergaande zon, en — aan het einde — de opkomende volle maan. 18.25 – 19-25. Kanne – Zusserdel – Zussen – Eben – St. Pierre – sluis – Casino Slavante – Zonneberg – Pietersberg – Kanne

Monday at DNK, Amsterdam: No-Input-Night, with a.o. Lucio Capece — Toshimaru (Toshio) Nakamura: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/.

Yours truly still has to come up with a bit of publicity text … Though I like the mention that the no-input mixer is such a hip instrument that it doesn’t have a page on wikipedia.

Listening now to a duo of Capece and Yannis Kyriakides; free download here:
http://www.audiotong.net/audio/releases/tng3005-en.html
http://www.audiotong.net/audio/releases/tng1010-en.html.

“Tech refuseniks will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.”

Sez a study by PEW Internet Research: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp.

Also at PEW, the fairly extensive survey of (American) bloggers from last July — often referred to since then: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp. “A national phone survey of bloggers finds that most are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers”. What is ‘funny’ though is that quite a few of the respondents stated they use MySpace for blogging, and none WordPress, MoveableType &c.

And just in: a small report on the buzzword web2.0: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/189/report_display.asp.

The transliteracies-project, led by Alan Liu: http://transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/research-project/. Don’t think I linked it before, from here.

Just a quick ‘reminder’: the web has been around for 15 years now… since August 6th 1991.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5243862.stm.

And in a sense it is still so crude… Things that people 15 years ago thought would be easy to do in 15 years time, is still impossible or difficult. We have MySpace where we’d hoped (well I certainly did) to have good and usable authoring tools to deal with the richness of texts, images, music on the web. But what do we do, we copy them and throw them into separate folders into folders.

Look at Sophie, a software project of the Institute for Future of the Book to understand what I’m getting at: http://www.futureofthebook.org/sophie/SophieIntro.pdf. I’m afraid I have to say that I don’t think Sophie will succeed (I mean: become successful = widely used), but the complaints voiced in it are spot on.

(I try to use VoodooPad, I tried DevonThink, I am blogging, but still everything is a mess until I write / have to write a text for a magazine, or do a presentation or lecture). (Hence my interest in Knowledge Management ;-)

(Browsed around a bit on MySpace; it is easy to understand why it’s so successful: it’s all about identity-construction, music plays an important role in that for teenagers, apart from the ‘profile’, the ‘friends’-thing, there’s the possibility to have music playing &c. &c. But I find it equally easy to imagine that in 2 years time MySpace will be abandoned, when a new gulf of teenagers starts to use some other service. It will survive, of course, just like so many other profile-sites for chatting & dating survive. (I might be wrong — I’m mostly wrong when I predict something). But it won’t be deemed as important as it is now. I don’t think people generally feel a commitment to a service like this).