Zero Comments: Selections so far
Posted on | September 24, 2007 |
Geert Lovink’s latest book is entertaining preparation for the blogging conference. I don’t often follow all of Geert’s writing because I’m not sufficiently attached to the same anarcho- artist- activist scenes, but when he does cover topics that cross over with mine I find his voice an incredibly refreshing mixture of gross generalisation, useful new references, and hilariously cheeky asides. Some of my favourite passages:
There is no doubt that technology such as the Internet lives on the principle of permanent change. There is no normalization in sight. The “tyranny of the new” rules, and it is this echo of the dot-com era that makes Web 2.0 look so tired right out of the gate. We can despise the relentless instability as a marketing trick, and ask ourselves why we, time and time again, get excited by the latest gadget or application. Instead of transcending the market noise and detaching ourselves, we may as well reconcile ourselves to the same old change and enjoy precisely selected and manufactured revolutions. (xi)
A nice thought to mull over while listening to the Facebook talkback on local ABC radio this afternoon. Similarly, this next passage is an interesting spin on current debates about sustainable white collar employment in networked subcultures. Geert wonders: ‘how the praise of the amateur can be undermined, not from the perspective of the endangered establishment but from that of the creative (under)class, the virtual intelligentsia, the precariat (the contemporary worker who faces more job uncertainty than her proletariat precursor), the multitude that seeks to professionalize its social position as new media workers. We need economic models that assist ambitious amateurs to make a living from their work. “Everyone is a professional.” [...] What is important here is to envision sustainable income sources beyond the current copyright regimes’ (xii-xiii).
Finally, in light of the issues we’re talking about on Friday, this passage is relevant as well:
Instead of focusing on the quality of the content, and the culture of writing, diary keeping, and reflection, blogs have become more or a rat race for maximum attention, measured in links and friends. Whereas blog software has facilitated the massification of the Internet, bringing easy-to-use publishing to tens of millions of users worldwide, by 2005 the blogosphere went into hysterical overdrive. A next wave of Internet chauvinism emerged. Blogs lost their slackness and first-movers started looking for the exit (xxiv).
Let’s hope not.
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September 25th, 2007 @ 1:30 am
I can never work out why Geert Lovinck is cited and or celebrated as he seems to me (when all the jargon is stripped out) just to be making the same old same old trite points about blogging and social networking. Look, I iz blogging my catz! I just want lots of friends and they aren’t real friends because they’re in the intertubes! Maybe I’m simplifying but it seems to me he invites it…