The Alphaville Herald

19 Responses to “Picking the Toaster with Pella Tully”

1. 

   Anonymoose
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   Reading anything written by Prok makes me feel that state-enforced eugenics programs might not be a bad thing.
2. 

   Tenshi Vielle
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   Hey Prok;

   Get me a grab bag while you’re at the convention. I thought about registering, but, hmmm… kind of an expensive ticket price.
3. 

   Onder Skall
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   This was really good, but drove me crazy at the same time. Your delivery of this info was perfect – I’m making no criticism of your writing here. It’s just this particular artform you’re engaging in: the practice of intellectuals of constant autopsy.

   You read something like this and at first think: “wow, check out all the hip and edgy and brilliant people totally all over the latest stuff! So cool!” Only… they’re only commenting on what’s already happened. They’re not building when they say these things, nor are they giving the readers new tools. They’re just … writing poetry. The hipsters of the information age…

   From a business perspective they’re saying something very simple: people have low attention spans and demand that it be catered to. That’s not really new info. There’s also the suggestion of tracking “attention” across web platforms. Spyware isn’t new either.

   This stuff would be a hit in Wired or Terra Nova, and it’s entertaining. It’s also just a really long way to say a basic thing, like poetry tends to be. This is why so many academic elites complain about being ignored by the business community: autopsies are interesting, but kind of ugly if you aren’t in the mood to be analytical, and never made anybody a dime.

   You said one thing that really leapt out at me though: “We can’t vote no.” That’s pivotal in so many ways that are beyond the scope of this article and probably this comment. The “only yes votes” culture builds. “No” votes (like banning people from forums) are terrible offensive acts that only serve to destroy. There’s no “no vote” for money, for instance – nobody owns an anti-dollar. That’s a philosophical tangent that could be expanded upon forever but I think I’ll refrain from inflicting upon the world any further…
4. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   Onder, I’m not here to become a proficient tech-talk writer like Mark Wallace, and help the companies sell their technology. Not at all.

   That’s why I don’t cave to your — and others’ — irritable desire to restrain, curb, cut, edit me. That’s why I’m not here to package and brand myself as so many other writers do these days, and project in some certain way to sell a brand. I have only one purpose: to think and get others to think along with me.

   I’m here to engage in criticism of the new media. There is a shocking, shocking deficit of this criticism. I mean, there’s 0. Blogs that are supposed to be covering new media independently, so to speak, often turn out to be bought and paid for by old or new media itself. Or even if they aren’t, they are tekkies drinking the cool-aid. If you do get criticism, it is precisely of this sour and dyspeptic Web 2.0 geezer type like Clay Shirky, annoyed that virtual worlds have created a whole new territory on the Internet that they don’t pwn.

   So this is a piece where in order to get the subtle concepts, you really have to reprint whole swathes of the dialogue, which I had to do. And summarizing it frankly would take more time and work than I can justify on a $3.00 US-per-piece Herald article.

   Look at the paragraphs of my own text only, without reprinted chat, and you can see it’s one of my shorter articles.

   My commentary is only a bit more heavy because again, the concepts are difficult to grasp at first blush, even for those who have thought about them a long time. Pella is pitching a concept of “participatory media” that seems very appealing at first. Who wouldn’t want to participate with a white, feathered lady in this really cool mash-up sort of stuff, making projects at Yahoo, which took in Flickr, but that enriched it and made both thrive (or so the narration goes). But… why did all of a sudden did we go from users — which isn’t a tainted word from the users’ perspective, or at least wasn’t until now — and generation, which seems a solely-owned system for that user, at least until now — and content, which seemed mainly what it was all about…to…’participatory media’?

   That lets us know that media is still a thing that big companies think big about as being mainly theirs. We participate…on suffrance.

   I didn’t even get to Pella’s pet project — Yahoo Pipes — and that’s because after spending some time on the site, I couldn’t figure out how to *easily* get it working for me — it requires lots of going into the weeds to set up queries and RSS feeds and such — and I had to let it go.

   And that’s one of the many things that makes me uneasy about the new media styling itself as so new: it’s just the same top-down power push thing, only this time, they’ve reached out and crowd-sourced — crowd-skimmed would be more like the word to use! — the engaged obsessive tekkies who populate their tech-talk forums — and they’ve harnessed them as free labour for what ultimately is a top-down push project.

   Indeed, free labour crowd-sourced or skimmed off the Internet in harnessing all kinds of “geeks” to make widgets for the burgeoning Web 2.0 social media is exactly what is needed by these large, bulky media corp things with no real visible means of big and long-term support (unless Ford Motor really is making lots of money off those clicks).

   There’s just something troubling about that crowd-skimming though, not only in the exploitation and braindrain potentially involved (you can get people already paid for in the IT economy somewhere else to work your widget evenings and weekends) but for the elitism involved.

   Here’s how it works. We’re lured to the sites with the potential of standing like Adam as co-creators in the Garden of Eden with God. Wow, heady stuff! Let’s name this, and that, and let’s see how THAT turns out made from my own rib! Wow!

   But…Pretty soon, we discover it’s in fact all rigged with these good and bad angels who had a war in heaven before we were all born, the story was all fixed, and in fact we have no role except to be consuming content pushed by these angels, whom we cannot overthrow. See what I mean? It is the human predicament.

   I don’t mind making an intellectual autopsy, and where else, except the Herald, can you make an intellectual autopsy? I could have put this piece on my own blog, of course, and normally I do with longer pieces, but I just thought readers who follow all the tech talk stuff might like to have a debate about this before VW opens.

   I plan a few more pieces that will have more pictures and captions and less prose, if that’s any comfort.

   I’m still not certain you mean that *I’m* guilty of the autopsy or THEY are. But here’s what I think was going on with something like this very curated, very staged event of Daniel Terdimen of CNET interviewing a Yahoo exec who used to be the Flickr co-owner (or still is…I never undersand when the snake swallows the frog at which point the frog disappears).

   Both of them are staging something that sounds and feels like a talk show, in which people will earnestly discuss the issues of the day. They’re also trying to create something edgy and cool like an art happening, because it’s in Second Life. But all of it really is an ad, a branding, a sell. It’s to sell technology itself. CNET is mainly about that. Daniel Terdiman has mainly been about that. And Yahoo as a brand is about as bland and wholesome as Wonder Bread used to be, and just wants to get more edgy, I guess, not sure.

   Daniel needs programming on his MOU-owned sim; MOU wants buzz to be always happening; Yahoo Pipes is a cool thing that smart and kewl kids with some coding chops should try, etc.

   Everybody is happy. Everything is wonderful. Except, what is the undertow at these meetings?

   o stomp on trolls
   o participate, but don’t generate
   o provide free labour
   o funny amateur social networks are cool as long as they stay in a container which we use to fuel clicks on ads
   o if they overthrow us or cost too much, they’re not fun anymore

   I wouldn’t bother if Pella Tully if I didn’t take really, deadly seriously what she says: she is building a civilization. Damn straight she is. And that is why I’m showing right up at the dawning of it and saying: no.

   As for the “no no” vote stuff, I have an article drafted on that and will return to that very ominous subject.
5. 

   Nacon
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   in other words… TAR SHE BLOWS!

   (of course, couldn’t put the auto return on because they didn’t set the building to group, how stupid of them.)
6. 

   Ian Betteridge
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   “I’m here to engage in criticism of the new media. There is a shocking, shocking deficit of this criticism. I mean, there’s 0.”

   Read Nick Carr. Read what I wrote about Web 2.0 last year (http://technovia.typepad.com/technovia/2006/07/a_response_to_s.html is a good place to start). There is LOTS of criticism of new media out there, if you can be bothered to look. Which of course, being the lazy rhetorical heckler you are, you can’t.
7. 

   Onder Skall
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   No need to get defensive Prok, I’m not attacking. It was a comment on the trend, not you. Note that I’m saying that it’s *good reading*, at least for most audiences. What I’m addressing is the practicality of the subject matter being discussed – ie: What are these people trying to say? Answer: something that’s already been said.

   Your comment about Clay… uh… yeah, not touchin’ it.

   Now, the rest of this is RE elitism — honestly you lost me. Every time you bring up elitism, Prok, you lose me. It’s not that I’m no good at playing “spot the snob” (oooh there’s a game idea…), it’s just that I’ve never even once been restricted. I go where I want and do as I please without ever being told “no, sorry, you’re not one of us.” Any who have attempted to do so have failed so miserably they’ve faded from memory.

   Actually… I don’t think I’ve ever been told “hey, you ARE one of us” either… but I digress…

   The issue is that nobody likes to hear complaining – and that has nothing to do with the subject matter or context. Constructive criticism is useless too – because nobody wants that either, unless directly solicited. It’s just the way people are. We all figure we’re all grown up and reject anybody trying to mommy-and-daddy us (or those similar to us).

   Remember, Prokofy, that you and I are strong people. We don’t need to stamp out these little things that bother us about Web 2.0 or SL or the fabled “new edge”. We simply step over the flaws and move on. Yes votes only.

   So there will be a few out there garnering enough Yes votes to survive when they could be doing much better. Let them. They’re nothing to us, as long as we’re reserving OUR Yes votes for the genuinely cool.
8. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   >Read Nick Carr. Read what I wrote about Web 2.0 last year (http://technovia.typepad.com/technovia/2006/07/a_response_to_s.html is a good place to start). There is LOTS of criticism of new media out there, if you can be bothered to look. Which of course, being the lazy rhetorical heckler you are, you can’t.

   I’m a very vociferous blog reader, I’ve read Nick Carr’s one piece, yes. He’s not a persistent critic. There’s Jarod Lanier’s piece on Digital Maoism — great! — but he’s not a persistent critic with a regular blog stance of this nature. You as a critic hardly musters beyond the 0 point, Ian because I already mentioned what I *didn’t* mean:

   “If you do get criticism, it is precisely of this sour and dyspeptic Web 2.0 geezer type like Clay Shirky, annoyed that virtual worlds have created a whole new territory on the Internet that they don’t pwn.”

   SO that’s where you fit in, and it’s just not interesting. That is, it’s interesting the first round, but when you see they are unable to intake and process fresh information and news and keep responding, but instead are merely sounding that one note again, it gets old. I’m always happy to read anything I’m pointed to, to help see an argument. I’m not seeing it.

   I’m hardly lazy and rhetorical. Indeed, I’m an A-lister who WORKS HARDER THAN YOU DO. YES, I WORK, HARDER THAN YOU DO.
9. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Mar 22nd, 2007
   

   Onder,

   When somebody writes this in the first comment, you can take it as a troll and ignore it, but you can also take it as a very direct cry from the heart of the tekkie-wiki geekland, that cannot bear any criticism or even sharp analysis, and can’t stand it when they are probed. They hate it so much, they want the people who do it to be killed in real life.

   “Reading anything written by Prok makes me feel that state-enforced eugenics programs might not be a bad thing.”

   Think about that, and think about just how bad that area of endeavor is that it can fetch up comments like that.

   >The issue is that nobody likes to hear complaining – and that has nothing to do with the subject matter or context. Constructive criticism is useless too – because nobody wants that either, unless directly solicited. It’s just the way people are.

   No, Onder, no no no. It’s not the way “people” are. It’s the way *some* thin-skinned prima-donna arrogant *geeks* are.

   Most endeavours of life — science, health, politics, education, art — these all have criticism of them built into their very fields, and certain cross-disciplinary and general public criticism. What, makers of virtual worlds and game gods get a pass forever? New media makers and shakers get a pass for ever? The media gets to criticize everything but nobody ever gets to criticize the media? Oh, please.

   Onder, you’re sadly mistaken if you imagine we can just walk around the robots. Walking around the robots was a concept that a major geek in my RL taught me about the way he was networking the office and making people produce reports and hook up to the Internet, and encountering all sorts of resistance — he kept talking about the need to walk around the robots. And so I do.

   But people who own huge Internet companies that pwn all your email, groups, pictures — the whole fabric of your life — well, I don’t think they are just a robot I walk around. They are a robot that is already so far into my lap that they have DNA analysis of my hair, see. It’s not something you just “walk around”.

   I utterly, utterly reject the concept of yes votes only. There needs to be no. If some big popular thing gets rolling like “let’s have mega linkable banlists sharable by everybody in SL” it’s absolutely vital for everyone else to be able to check off a box that says NO and not dream up some other “yes” proposal that merely tweaks what is at heart a bad idea.

   As for your notion that there is no elite, I suppose that happens because…you’re one of them! At least one of their outer circles. So of course you experience none of what I’m explaining.
10. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Mar 22nd, 2007
    

    Also, I do think that what Pella and GreeterDan were discussing here isn’t mere PR fluff, it isn’t mere happy talk, although we get a lot of that from these tech folks. They are grappling with some Big Ideas. That’s why we bother with them.

    And Pella’s idea of transferring the attention product might sound like merely a rewarming of the idea as you understood it, that “people have low attention spans and demand that it be catered to. That’s not really new info. There’s also the suggestion of tracking “attention” across web platforms. Spyware isn’t new either”

    No, I understood her to be saying something that was not unlike the old labour theory of value (and as these leftoid folks all tend to be steeped in conscious or unconscious Marxism at somewhere along their careers in college or whatever, it’s not surprising).

    That is, if I as a consumer — a prosumer, a participator in the awesome act of Creation of Media that others will consume and will Add Value to me, them, and that framing company that provides the container, take the time to a) read some books b) scan some stuff on Amazon like favourite lists and c) write a review I now have an Attention Product.

    What can I do with my Attention Product? Well, Pella is saying what Web 2 has to do for us is migrate, dislocate, reconnect, keep identity across frontiers, etc.

    So my Attention Product, let’s say MyBookOnQuiltsReview123434A on amazon.com is something I port over to E-bay. That entire bundle of links, ideas, thought, helpful tips now because a button, a widget, an icon, a something over on ebay. Those who are browsing for quilts, trying to figure out which ones to buy, whether to get this pattern or that pattern then access my QuiltAttentionProduct321042B which then becomes a factor in them buying EBayQuilt123987C.

    Now, me, the buyer of the e-bay quilt, and browsers of similar quilts are now in the QuiltCommunity where we presumably go and have happy little times together in vox.com or kaneva.com where we actually upload our quilt patterns and sit and gab about them and even go over to SL where we upload them and sell them for people to have in their little SL homes, see. So we’ve amplified my little attention product about 6 different ways; made community about 12 different ways, and we’ve Added Value.

    All well and good. Where I wonder what’s going on, however, is as follows:

    a. Are people willing to be driven into little codified nonce communities like that by companies? The thing I hate most about amazon.com is the way it leaps up to tell me which book to buy when I log on and then also gives me the unnecessary rap about people who bought THIS book also bought THAT book.

    b. Amazon gets more clicks and sales of a book it’s selling due to my revue (do they share any revenue for that? I think they do but only after some number of hits or something? worth checking). The ebay person sells their quilt better. But where do I get the payoff? My payoff is in the satisfaction gained from the Contribution Economy that Pella said makes the whole Internet go round, all that selfless giving — which, as she also indicates, is also all about GETTING ATTENTION. Not just GIVING. But GETTING.

    c. At what point does this no longer become sustainable becaue the pile of cards is stacked up just too high? If everybody writes reviews, how can I get noticed? If I don’t make much revenue, can I keep writing? Do the people in the quilt club get so organized they break off from ebay and make QuiltBuyersCentral.com that drives all the traffic away from ebay? I dunno, there’s just a lot of questions to me how it all sustains. In other words, I don’t feel that the attention economy, which is merely the old labour theory of value in new cyber clothing, suffers from any alienation of the worker from the product. If anything, the worker suffers from overidentification, overamplication and duplication of his product and that leads to copyright theft.

    I know I’m supposed to be like Eric Rice here, and merely accept that I must always and everywhere be just giving, giving, giving away my music, poetry, thoughts, whatever for free…just because. The recipe for getting paid after that gets very hazy to me but seems to involve trying to get the attention of one of the old dinosaur big media companies…
11. 

    Onder Skall
    

    Mar 22nd, 2007
    

    Prok, these guys who log in and just say “I hate Prok” look like complete morons. They’re ignorable, so… y’know… ignore ‘em. That’s what everybody else does.

    I’m also wondering about your comparison of Web 2.0 apps to science, health, politics, education, art. Ultimately a website is a consumer product. We vote on it with our money, as we do with all other products. Web apps WISH they were works of art. Entrepreneurs WISH there was science to all of this. But no, it’s just a bunch of products, and right now what’s working is whatever sticks. (The Yes vote)

    I’m not saying it’s FORBIDDEN to critique them, but nobody wants to listen to someone carry on and on about how much Tide sucks. Imagine how little the lackey who works at Tide cares to hear it, too, and what little difference complaints make when the cash is rollin’ in.

    Your need for a No arises from a perception that you don’t have a choice here. I’ve changed my name, email accounts, web apps I obsess over, and even my posting style a dozen times over the last decade. Something bores me, I move on, they lose a customer. I’m not the only one… hundreds of thousands of us work this way. I see nothing posing a serious threat to that beyond some jackass somewhere screaming “threat to national security”.

    Lastly… hang on now… ME?? Elite? Dewd, not one person in SL knows my real name, I didn’t walk in here with any credentials, I’m not a member of any club, I don’t go to the big boring parties and my account was created late last year. I don’t even own LAND. I’m where I am because I make things happen, take what I need and never mind the bollocks. You can call me ‘l33t, but don’t even THINK about tossing me in with your FIC.
12. 

    Mark Wallace
    

    Mar 22nd, 2007
    

    most definitely was not me who coined the term Continuous Partial Attention
13. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Mar 22nd, 2007
    

    >I’m also wondering about your comparison of Web 2.0 apps to science, health, politics, education, art. Ultimately a website is a consumer product. We vote on it with our money, as we do with all other products. Web apps WISH they were works of art. Entrepreneurs WISH there was science to all of this. But no, it’s just a bunch of products, and right now what’s working is whatever sticks. (The Yes vote)

    Well, it’s not a product. It’s a world. It’s a place. It’s a realm. It has interactivity, synchronicity, etc. I refuse to accept these are mere “products” when they are “communities” and even “immersive worlds”.

    I don’t buy the Tekkie Exit Clause either, which you invoke with all your changing of names, cancelling of accounts, etc. etc. It’s a concept that all these tekkies push strenuously, like they push “no no vote”. It’s part of their ideology. I reject it. You don’t have to emigrate from the United States in order to condemn the government and try to change it. Second Life or Yahoo aren’t things like my telephone service, which I just switched yet again because they were cretins who couldn’t repair a simple phone line for 2 days and passed the buck on it, and I put in another line that was more responsive on their customer service. But I certainly wouldn’t do that with Yahoo. Yahoo has groups that I’ve had for years and years, and email going back centuries in the dog-years of online life. I can’t imagine just saying “oh, well, I’m done with Yahoo”. Yahoo is like air. You breathe it. It’s on your home page. If they take it away, well, they will be taking part of your soul. I feel that way about Zing, the photo site that went down that I just liked a lot better than I like Flicker (which I just can’t get used to. Something about it rubs me the wrong way and I don’t have time to figure out what).

    And you are being literalist here, Onder. When I talk about Web 2.0 apps, I’m talking about the entire enterprise of making the giant thingie called “The Internet And All Its Works”. So that *is* like science or health, it’s an area of research, activity, enterprise, and you can’t look at it only as this or that app.

    >I’m not saying it’s FORBIDDEN to critique them, but nobody wants to listen to someone carry on and on about how much Tide sucks. Imagine how little the lackey who works at Tide cares to hear it, too, and what little difference complaints make when the cash is rollin’ in.

    It’s not about Tide. You’re like those people who muscle on to forums and scornfully deride everybody’s efforts to see SL as a world or a place or an interactive community and yell at people and tell them that they are behaving like people immersing themselves in their toaster or getting upset about their toaster.

    As Pella has explained to us helpfully, the Toaster is now reaffirmed in the Noosphere for all of us. The Toaster is not just “toaster” — that grubby little piece of metal that might have burn English muffin parts in it — but the Toaster is a thing you pick out with your Toaster Friends in Toaster Town with the Toaster Widget. John Doe in Missoula, Montana who told me to buy This Toaster and not That Toaster is now bound to me for life as my Toaster Soul Brother.

    I have a feeling you’re not getting this, Onder.

    >Your need for a No arises from a perception that you don’t have a choice here.

    But I don’t! Let me tell you the things I did NOT chose in Second Life:

    o removal of telehubs completely from the mainland, and allowing them to remain on islands
    o $1000 auction system
    o flexiprims
    o open-source of the client
    o etc

    A small but vocal minority amen-cornered the Lindens on these things, and they went in.

    >Lastly… hang on now… ME?? Elite? Dewd, not one person in SL knows my real name, I didn’t walk in here with any credentials, I’m not a member of any club, I don’t go to the big boring parties and my account was created late last year.

    If you are a programmer/coder/IT guy/tekkie, trust me, you are instantly a member of the Brethren. It’s a relatively small club in SL, and even if you don’t go to the right parties, you’re in. This isn’t being FIC, but my comment about the elites that the Pellas of the word are going after in their “crowd-skimming” is that they pick out the geeks, the people who can learn HTML or PHP or whatever and fuss with all this tekkie nerdy stuff.
14. 

    Ian Betteridge
    

    Mar 23rd, 2007
    

    “I’m a very vociferous blog reader, I’ve read Nick Carr’s one piece, yes. He’s not a persistent critic. ”

    If you think that Nick Carr has posted ONE piece criticising Web 2.0, then you are not a consistent Carr reader.

    “SO that’s where you fit in, and it’s just not interesting. ”

    The idea of you criticising someone as “sour and dispetic” is hilarious.

    “I’m hardly lazy and rhetorical. Indeed, I’m an A-lister who WORKS HARDER THAN YOU DO. YES, I WORK, HARDER THAN YOU DO.”

    LOL Prok. Yes, putting something all in caps makes it true. An A-lister? You’re a B-lister even in the smallish world of Second Life blogs. You mistake “shouting loudly and posting a lot” for influence and importance. And that you’re forced to self-proclaim as an A-lister proves that you’re nothing of the sort.
15. 

    Onder Skall
    

    Mar 23rd, 2007
    

    Prokofy: I’m re-reading my comment from last night and I’m uncomfortable with the tone I took. Sometimes things can come across as dismissive or disrespectful when I don’t really mean them that way, so I apologize if it seemed that way. I don’t mean to be flippant.

    Now, you’re bringing politics into it, comparing virtual worlds to countries. That I get, but you and I have… religious differences there. The kind of thing that can’t be resolved with debate.

    Warning: what follows will offend some – probably Prokofy.
    You’re under the impression that a government gives a crap what the people think. I seriously don’t. Governments are independent self-serving agencies, just like any company. They “handle” the public, but aren’t really influenced by it. The only way to live in this world is to do as you will, ignore the government, and if the government won’t stand to be ignored, you move. We are permanently, globally subjugated in that respect. That must offend so so SO many people… ah well. Like I said: it’s a religious difference of opinion. Debating the point is a futile effort. We believe what we believe.

    You’re describing how Yahoo owns you here. How disturbing is that? I make my peace as I go along that anything I don’t save as a file to my hard drive could disappear tomorrow. If you can’t live like that, demand that Yahoo provide a backup or export service I suppose… but I’m not being “Tekkie” there. Closer to “Vagabond”. I believe that freedom is more important than the pain of letting things go. That’s a bitter pill for some I guess… which… I suppose validates what YOU’re saying about wanting to be able to change the way things work within a given system. Hmmm… so I guess I’m not disagreeing with you anymore, just saying that it completely doesn’t work for somebody like me.

    No idea what that means in the larger context…

    Now, THIS is a different matter:
    “As Pella has explained to us helpfully, the Toaster is now reaffirmed in the Noosphere for all of us. The Toaster is not just “toaster” — that grubby little piece of metal that might have burn English muffin parts in it — but the Toaster is a thing you pick out with your Toaster Friends in Toaster Town with the Toaster Widget. John Doe in Missoula, Montana who told me to buy This Toaster and not That Toaster is now bound to me for life as my Toaster Soul Brother.”

    Holy cow. New edge hipster grooviness. I get it, I really do… we all get to rate stuff and those ratings affect what other people buy, and our ratings affect shopping across the entire web not just the particular place we left that rating. There might even, conceivably, be an occasion where I think twice about the person whose recommendation I took. That’s a much less romantic take on it but… I still can’t get excited about it.

    I hear what you’re saying about Flickr… it’s awkward and uncomfortable somehow, like everything has to fit in a box they define. Can’t put my finger on it, but Google (through Blogger.com) just launched a new comparable tool that I like a little better (don’t remember the name). There’s always Photobucket. CNet is pushing Heypix. Always alternatives.

    Oh and back to the Elite issue… have I said anything that requires technical prowess beyond being able to surf and understand what the hell people are saying?
16. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Mar 23rd, 2007
    

    You’re under the impression that a government gives a crap what the people think. I seriously don’t. Governments are independent self-serving agencies, just like any company. They “handle” the public, but aren’t really influenced by it. The only way to live in this world is to do as you will, ignore the government, and if the government won’t stand to be ignored, you move. We are permanently, globally subjugated in that respect. That must offend so so SO many people… ah well. Like I said: it’s a religious difference of opinion. Debating the point is a futile effort. We believe what we believe.

    The problem with you, Onder, is that you live in Canada. And here, I’m on safe ground criticizing Canada because I lived there for nearly 5 years going to university, and also own land there and travel a bit there now and then. Canada is one of those English-speaking countries with a huge chip on its shoulder about America. It creates its identity using the casting mold method of deciding what it’s against and what it hates rather than establishing its own secure identity. I have good, long-time Canadian friends that I chuckle over as they write me these fulminating rants about “Bush” and “Guantanamo” as if they are completely unaware of far greater horrors in the world which in fact their own government is very active in working on through the UN and OSCE and such.

    The other thing about Canada is that it has a huge, vast, sprawling government structure where LOTS AND LOTS of people have their jobs. Artists, writer, animators, etc. get grants to do what they do from the government, not from private foundations as they would in the US. The government is just EVERYWHERE. And that gives people an attitude to government that is actually scornful and cynical, as yours is.

    I didn’t vote for these current rogues in charge in the National Security Junta in Washingstan or whatever, but at my local level, I have congressmen, assemblymen, etc who are hugely responsible and that actually hoof it over to my housing and schools and get way down in the weeds with all the severe problems of NYC, and also have a good global perspective too. So I can’t be cynical and despairing about people who actually show up when I and my neighbours write them. People like Dan Gorodnik or Brian Cavanaugh in NYC or even take Hillary at the senatorial level, whatever you might think about her, she has great staff and she’s good on a lot of issues even though I don’t favour her as president. There are many good members fighting now to get the Iraq bill passed, or fighting to get more money for Darfur, and they are hugely responsive, networked, internnetted, hell some of them are even in SL.

    I have the highest regard for the Canadian civil servants who occupy certain very key positions in the UN — my God, they put themselves in harm’s way in ways you can’t imagine sitting in your games. Seriously, I cannot say enough good things about Canada as a country and a force in the world — but I do think that it is simply too government top-heavy. P.S. I have the Canadians to thank for good health care too, compared to so many other countries with socialized medicine INCLUDING OUR OWN which truly rots on the managed care front.

    Your religion is your affair, but if religious doctrine is in error or just pig=headed and stupid, hey, it’s fine to critique it. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that I must believe in the Virgin Birth or something…

    You simply sound to me like a lot of smug, jaded, 20 or 30 something tekkie types who pride themselves on being “independent” and “innovative” but often as as alike as peas in a pod in their predictable, knee-jerk views, hating government, hating religious belief, hating democracy, and fancing that the world should just all be a yes/no toggle on a switchboard they devise to maximum their own peculiar pleasures and pursuits. It’s really a God-awful generation to be observing from the perspective of the previous one…

    Freedom isn’t obsession with back-up copies. Hey, I’ve lost thousands of emails, you don’t “let it go” but it disappears and you deal. It’s not like the death of a loved one, of course, so you put it in perspective. I am merely trying to explain the permeation of these companies and their influence. ON the one hand, they’re nothings, disposable, forgottable, burnt as crash in the next big thing, on the other had they’re pervasive for what they are.

    Um, I think you have a real difficulty distinguishing new age groovster hippness, of which I surely am NOT guilty, with simply garden-variety satire not rising to any great heights.

    The Noosphere is a Russian invention, I love it, it’s great, it’s the first Internet from like 2 centuries ago or something.

    I feel so uncool for not liking FLickr and made uncomfortable by it that I’m glad to hear you have the same feeling. Is it the box? No, how could that be? Every photo site has boxes. Is it all that whiteness? That’s it, perhaps. THey love whiteness. Pella was as pale as death, remember?

    It’s not only that I don’t like Flickr myself to use, and feel better with other places like tripod or photobucket, to which I remain strangely attached despite their drawbacks. It’s that I hate pressing on somebody else’s Flickr. I wince in advance. I know I’m going to be seeing some incomprehensible and stupid tag cloud — tag clouds really set my teeth on edge. I’ve decided that tag clouds are really EVIL.

    It’s not about saying and being incomprehensible. It’s about being. People who are coders can walk through the membrane. People who aren’t can’t.
17. 

    Onder Skall
    

    Mar 23rd, 2007
    

    Who’s talking about America or Canada or any other country in particular? You religious patriots, never happy unless you’re waving a flag at somebody, offended by all who don’t bow and scrape. Prokofy, you are entirely allowed to the religious belief that a government exists for the people, but don’t misinterpret my disagreement for distain for the opinion holder. I’m allowed to believe whatever I want without hating those who don’t. I bow to none, but hereby acknowledge the strength in those who do.

    RE the hipster stuff: OH YOU WERE KIDDING! Damn, sorry, I didn’t pick up on that. Duh.

    Noosphere, hoo boy… this conversation has officially run the gamut. LOL! What a strange idea that was… floating somewhere between sociology and (later) occultism. Pretty avant garde for the turn of the last century though. I wonder what ideas we might tease out of it for our modern network.

    Flickr kills me. Maybe it’s because it’s… oh I know why! Because you’re there and have to wait wait wait for the page to load, and then you get these useless tiny little thumbs on the side to give you an idea of what the other pix are, but there are only TWO thumbs, so you click on the next image and wait..wait..wait.. oh that one sucked, ok let’s check the next one wait..wait..wait..yeah that was less than good too. They make you wait JUST long enough to stay but not QUITE long enough so that you conciously notice that you’re waiting, and you can’t SKIP AHEAD or have any idea what’s in the rest of the album. Plus the captions are generally non-existent so nothing has any context, which more thumbnails would at least give you…

    It’s like a projector slideshow where the thing is set on automatic and you’re the only one in the room.
18. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Mar 27th, 2007
    

    >What a strange idea that was… floating somewhere between sociology and (later) occultism

    And like…the idea of the metaverse isn’t the same wierd thing?!
19. 

    milka
    

    Apr 4th, 2007
    

    traduire tou en francai car je voudrai minscrir a se jeu svp merci.

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