|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ANNOUNCEMENTS and ARTICLES: http://pnews.org/art/art.shtml ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
On6/6/04 11:04 AM, J.D. Abolins spake thusly: > |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| > ANNOUNCEMENTS and ARTICLES: http://pnews.org/art/art.shtml > |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| > > To pick up on Hank Roth's good commetnary about blogging and its overload > effects upon the networks and the readers, there is also a revenge effect for > the bloggers. > > This might vary among generations but I hope there's enough common experience > to make this understandable: > > Imagine that all kinds of things you said, pondered, described, and thought > had been preserved and cataloged in a way that snippets could pop up years > later? > > If you are like me, there is a nice quality about the flow of life where much > of the past is left behind. While various theological views teach about every > word and deed being used in some final judgement, the practical lifetime > experience is that things are nowhere so in "dos velt", this world. Or least > that has been the case for much of human existence. > > Much has been said and written about the surveillance and data mining > situation where governmental and corporate organizations collect enormous > amount of info about our lives. But blogging, like so many online activities, > has us providing all too much info. > > Recently, I was following through a situation where New York City police and > other agencies were going after a fellow who used his Web site to post names, > home addresses, hangouts, children's names, etc. of any cops for whom he > could get info. A big mess. While the cops and the NY Post tabloid were > focusing upon the danger this posed to the cops, I found in my study that the > Web site author has done lot of damage to himself via online postings over > the past decade. I was able to Goggle up volumes of info about this fellow's > views, his postings, his various businesses, his brief stint at teaching at a > college that specializes in criminal justice subjects, and --most damning for > him-- diatribes concern the police. A significant amount of the really > damning info came from the Usenet postings cataloged by Google. > > Now, various people have blamed Google for invading privacy by cataloging and > caching so many old postings. While I can understand the sense of intrusion > claimed, it reflecting an expectation that the Internet operates just like > the pre-Internet world where so much of the garbage fades away in the past > and lives go on. > > Blogging goes much further than the Usenet, Web postings, etc. in buildign up > long-term collections of views, thoughts, expressions, etc. The blogging > medium, for the most part, encourages a stream of consciousness writing. Done > in some literary contexts, stream of consciousness writing can work when > edited and refined to communicate better. But the way most blogs work, it > gets cumbersome at best and makes it harder to sift through ideas. (The > impact of blogs upon search engines is a major concern where finding quality > info about any topic might mean wading through volumes of blog spew.) > > Some say that the ongoing volumes of storage of the stream of consciousness > writings will be useful to teach up someday. (There are proposal for > blackboxing people's lives for business and other purposes.) > > One of the other gotchas of blogging is in misdirected sense of intimacy. It > is easy to picture, as one blogs, the readers being theire and listening to > one's thoughts. But the readers might not be the ones imagined. (I wonder if > blogging might also encourage saying things one would not in an intimate > relationship because human in-person intimacy does entail some thought and > editing or one can face some interestign consequences. <g>) > > In George Orwell's 1984, there is scene where the protagonists earlier > comments about his fear of rats secretly recorded is used to direct the > torure used against him. That is tame to what can be done with the blogged > comments. Manipulation on a grand scale. (By the way, ever notice that > blogging, at least in the spew form, is not done by the "powers that be". > <g>) > > Colsing off, I am not against people writing and expressing their thoughts, > putting diaries online, etc. in themselves. I am, however, concerned with the > lack of though in both the choices of what's often put online and the mode of > expression. It does clutter the InterNUT. It also can provide too much > ill-fitting information that can complicate lives later on. (How many people > blogging are thinking how their words will sound decades later, how it will > sound to their children, to those who have no idea of the context of the > blogs, etc.?) > > J.D. Abolins > (By the way, many of my writings and comments are searchable and cataloged > online. I am aware of that and keep it in mind as I post things. Not that I > always write high quality material but I try to consider the overall picture > that would come out of a search.) > > --- > / o o \ PNEWS Topic Specific Portals (Vortals) > ===OO=====OO================================================= > http://pnews.org/vortal/ New World disOrder and Myth Busters > http://g0lem.net/vortal/ Insane Planet and Wacko World > http://g0lem.net/portal/ Bad-Ass Truth and TheGolemsPortal > http://pnews.org/portal/ Naked Truth and PNEWS Portal > ============================================================= > \_/ \_/ > I am deathly afraid of being surrounded by young, nude, blonde Swedish nymphomaniacs --- / o o \ PNEWS Topic Specific Portals (Vortals) ===OO=====OO================================================= http://pnews.org/vortal/ New World disOrder and Myth Busters http://g0lem.net/vortal/ Insane Planet and Wacko World http://g0lem.net/portal/ Bad-Ass Truth and TheGolemsPortal http://pnews.org/portal/ Naked Truth and PNEWS Portal ============================================================= \_/ \_/
