Filed under: online predators
i have been slowly trolling the online predator debate for some course work, and thought i’d share the wiki i’ve put together. i’ve been monitorting prop 83 more specifically, but inadvertently have started tracking other initiatives across the country and in the UK as well. if you come across anything, please feel free to send the word along.
I tag. Voraciously. I visit my del.icio.us account several times a day and it’s starting to get to the point, where I turn to my del.icio.us account more so than google when I am searching for things. As I have started to think about tagging more, I’ve become struck by several characteristics of the acts of tagging itself.
From a general view, I have a sinking suspicion that a lot of the discourse surrounding “information” is devoid of any kind of political economy framework, i.e a consideration of the processes of consumption and production and the power dynamics at play. Don’t get me wrong, there are people who are considering these processes in related avenues, but they typically situate themselves in the media or new media discourse. That being said, it seems that tagging represents a new kind of collapse between consumption and production. While I don’t think this view is entirely original…I think a lot of the rhetoric surrounding “user-generated content” more generally is based on the view of enabling users of content to now be producers of content. What I think is particularly interesting in tagging is the simultaneity of consumption and production; that in the single act of tagging you are simultaneously consuming information and producing information. Metaphors of re-mix abound in these discussions, but it’s important to note that re-mix, from a music point of view, still kept the distinctions between consumption and production in tact.
I think part of this collapse simultaneity then is related to the purely symbolic domain of tagging, as it stands currently. Tagging so far has been implemented solely in the digital space, with reference solely to digital materials.
From a network perspective, tagging starts with the self and the ego, generating social benefits and collective knowledge in a kind of accidental-externalistic fashion, rather than from a purely altruistic one. This recent blog post on the differences between tagging in amazon and librarything discuss the importance of tagging of your own use rather than tagging for everyone else. So, as an extension of the ego network, tagging begins to operate like some kind of symbolic free market, but with consumers and producers coupled as one.
so i got to thinking after my last post about reading and suddenly recalled a funny feeling a got a month or so ago. i was in the process of reading/skimming some books i had checked out of the library and they triggered some kind of flashback which launched me into a hunt for an article i had read years ago somewhere else. i eventually found it, picked it up, read that for a bit and that in turn triggered some other connection, which got me rooting through my drawers and such, looking for another book.
at one point i realized that i was beginning to read like how i browse the internet. and as soon as i realized that, i had no idea what to make of it. i suppose with the non-digital books (or just “books”), the only hyperlink is the one you make yourself across texts. i find it strange that my brain has just become attuned to this; has somehow cognitively morphed itself in this way, which makes it hard to “delink” sometimes. i would like to be able to get through the reading without my brain firing off into a multitude of directions.
Filed under: booklists
inspired my advisor’s blog posting on “metareading” (reading about reading), coupled with my love of lists, i am going restart my virtual love affair with lists right here.
books i’ve bought recently and haven’t read yet:
1. Sorting Things Out, Geof Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
2. The New Media Reader, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (Eds.)
3. Memory, History, Forgetting, Paul Ricoeur
4. Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida
5. Local Knowledge, Clifford Geertz
Filed under: music
OMG, the new panda bear album, person pitch, is just too perfect: psych-y, flowy, how to describe? well, it’s definitely more dramatic and dynamic than the previous panda bear album, with a good deal more variation. the looped vocals and guitars are all there, but there’s a much more varied pallette of sound…but what would this guy do without reverb? i love love love love love it though. so so so good. it’s 11:35pm, i’m writing a paper, listening to panda bear, and it’s raining in LA. could not be more perfect.
so i have just gotten back after an extended stay at my parents’ place for tet. for those of you who don’t know, tet is the vietnamese term for the lunar new year. days were filled going to buddhist temples, burning incense, visiting family, handing out red envelopes, receiving red envelopes, eating vegetarian food, “visiting” ancestors at cemetaries…
as i have gotten older, a lot of these rituals have fallen into my vague memory, even more so that these rituals are predicated on a whole world view and set of beliefs that have become increasingly foreign to me they are mediated by my family and i no longer live with them. it’s hard to describe, but i think that all children experience this kind of initial jolt when we return to out parents place: slipping back into the role that we once occupied –both familiar and slightly discomforting–, that familiar meter of conversation, certain smells, etc. but for me it’s especially jarring only because it’s founded on a whole worldview that i understand less and less as i get older.
as a child of immigrant parents, there are things that i simply just don’t bother mentioning to them as i know they just couldn’t undestand. not that are stupid, but it’s just completely off their radar. case in point, as much as i have tried to explain to them that ryan is taking off work for six months and hiking the applachian trail, they still don’t understand what that means. the don’t comprehend at all the notion of willingly NOT working, let along walking in the woods by yourself for an extended period of time. this is
my first tet with my family in ten years and i still don’t quite get why i have to bow three times and kneel at the altar with one buddha, but then only bow once at the altar of my ancestors. i still don’t quite get why we bless coffee at the altar for my grandfather. i don’t understand exactly what they’re saying when they’re doing their buddhist chants. i don’t get much of it. but i just do them now anyway.
