Roger wrote:
>I had one thousand unread fluxlist messages - (amongst the read ones -
going
back to October) I was constantly being reminded of this
by a little winking reminder in the corner of the screen. The good news is I
have now got it down to about 600. Very interesting reading it this way. It
would be nice to condense it into a document or book. Maybe I'll make that a
project of mine. Would anyone object?<
I don't think forming the posts into a book is a particularly good idea for
several reasons:
Firstly to do things properly you would need the written permission of each
person whose posts you intended to use and it is possible that a key voice
in a particular debate may refuse thus making the accurate rendering of that
debate in print impossible.
Secondly you could not condense the posts without losing a degree of
context, especially the tangents that people go off at and which make these
discussions such fun.
Thirdly and probably most importantly what makes Fluxlist work is the
asynchronous communication that e-mail allows, putting the posts in a book
in chronological order would not give the same feeling to the reader.
Lastly and perhaps on a more positive note, perhaps the only thing that
would work would be an edited highlights of Fluxlist kind of book where you
take editorial responsibility and select what you want to publish with the
senders permission.
I should say now that I would refuse to be part of any such book since
someone may be left out. What I like about Fluxlist is its democracy,
everyone has a voice, we are an open public list. Our archives are also
publicly readable. Anyone can take part. As soon as you consider the idea of
turning our dialogue into print you enter an area where you will upset those
you do not include and those you do include will consider themselves more
valuable to the list -- it would certainly be divisive and may lead to a
degree of unpleasantness.
Anyone can read the list in the way you describe at the archives:
either,
http://king.dom.de/fluxus/list/
or
http://www.mail-archive.com/fluxlist%40scribble.com/maillist.html
We have plans to look into future production of CDs containing list
archives. The Fluxlist box contains a complete archive of the list from its
beginning to late last year. Hopefully we'll be able to follow this up with
other CDs in the future although there is probably very little point in
compiling less than six months worth of posts on CD so don't expect this
soon.
Well Roger, sorry to be so negative in reply but that's just my view. I
think CDs of list dialogue work fine though so if you wanted to write any
CDs of a particular time frame periods of discussion that would be fine
although you would have to make sure you included everyone within that time
frame both for accuracy and democracy.
Anyway, glad you're enjoying the list. I really enjoy it as you know,
there's something really nice about it. I've actually missed being able to
contribute recently as I've found myself busier this year than last. I still
try and post once a day though. Although I've been trying to think of a good
snow story and have none.
Okay, I'll get back to work and stop the rambling.
cheers,
Sol.
