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| Sunday, March 10, 2002 |
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Out of the Fray 
| | The Fray was packed and we couldn't get in. I had never heard of it before. So far that's my big take-away from SXSW: It's possible to know a lot of stuff, and a lot of people, and to put the many tentacles of your mind on every cultural pulse you can find, and still miss most of it. |
| | On the way to the club, somebody explained a Fray as "kind of like blogging, only live." Groans went up. That's another takeaway. Blogs are, as Andrew Orlowski pointed out, suddenly passé. Never mind that more people are doing it every day. |
| | Whatever. I've gotta crash. |
| | At the end of the day, I do still want business to have some humanity. I think mine does -- if only because my clients often hear me say "motherfucker." |
| | And there's what makes blogs different than "sites." So different, it's almost physical. |
| | Oh, and something more to worry about: the Tauzin Bill. Here's what a friend just wrote to me: |
| | SO, in effect Tauzin will concentrate the overall control of access to the internet into the hands of the last 4 baby bells and the few remaining cable companies. Once "access too" is controled, the content flow of information will be in the hands of the boards of director's of a handfull of companies. This is SCARY!!!!! |
| | He used to run a small ISP, but basically got crushed. |
Even though I'm already warped
Just Awards
| | I'm at the SXSW Web Awards event, which is packed. I just got a seat somebody abandoned (amazingly... it's like finding a $20 bill), found some Wayport wi-fi, paid my ten bucks (rationalization: it's like parking), and I'm on. The master of ceremonies is J. Halcyon Styn of CockyBastard.com, who is a very funny guy with his long hair done up in something that looks like a pink sunflower sticking toward the ceiling out of the back of his head. He's wearing a pink fur vest and pink vinyl pants. He's like a white George Clinton. |
| | We came in late and missed most of the awards. Right now he's giving the one for "personal site/online diary." Contestants: Dam the Pacific, Jason Zada.com, Mastication Is Normal, SelfPortrait and Sugati. The wnner is .... Mastication is normal. |
| | They're at streaming audio now: LBJ for Kids, Loop Labs, Rhapsody Digital Music Service. LoopLabs won. The winner just said "spread the love," which I heard as spread the loud, which I like better. |
| | Here come the Bloggies. Ry-guy.com and WhereWereYou are two contestants. Ry-guy won. |
| | Another blog award... Adman.org. Backwash, Bambino's Curse, Blogdex, Dollarshort.org. It goes to... Dollarshort. (Poor Cameron. Shit.) "I don't win things" she said, "so I'm going to have to change somethning." She's telling her story. Very sweet and cute. Kinda chokes everybody up. Big applause. |
| | Next award... Best wierd/extreme site: All my life, Bubblesoap, kill the president, Teddy, Newsoid. Teddy won. |
| | Just discovered that all the URLs are here. |
| | Not doing too bad for typing this in the dark. |
| | Deviant Art just won best ... something. People's Choice. |
| | Best of Show.... Tongsville. The guy won earlier for another category, apparently. |
| | My battery is getting low. Shit. I discovered earlier that switching batteries off the grid brings the machine down. |
| | Time to Fray. I'll explain later. |
Cross-annotating the blogologue
Applied Utopia
| | Lane is leading this discussion we're having about The Net in "Everything New is Old Again: Talking About the Future of the New Economy." Peter Merholz is banging away on his Dell (alone in a circle of Titania). Wes is talking about souls being stolen by photographers. Cam is talkng now. Jay is sitting to my right, wanting to say something. |
| | Lane (the utopian here, I think) opened by saying he thought we did something in the last six years that will be around for the duration: it's that important. A guy name Andrew talked about the wheel (not sure if he agreed or disagreed, but... whatever). I agree: What we made with the Net is seminal and huge. A new world — One nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. (My mantra.) |
| | I want to say this is a great discussion, but maybe that's because I'mn hogging the floor. (Hog 'n blog... a whole new thing...). I'll shut up for awhile. |
| | Hey, Wes is blogging, two seats away. He made a great point, too, about how the pipefitters of the world have already been throttling the Net by removing its symmetry (shutting down port 80, for example) and other things. |
| | I just elbowed Cam (sitting to my left) to point out that his "current location" isn't "New York, NY USA," like his blog says. He shrugged. And he's right. We're all in the Great Here. (Where Cam is now watching a DVD). |
| | Unspoken thought: this talk is about redestroying the wheel. |
| | Lane: "If I can't learn it in an O'Reilly book..." then he shrugs. Like, why bother? Nice gesture. |
| | Some bloggers here don't have laptops. Like Meg and Jay. That means they're probably actually listening . |
| | Reading Wes, I get that blogging like passing notes in class. |
| | Lane is asking "What's really new?" I think: journalism. But apparently the Journalism Thing was done to death here last year. A tarbaby topic. What I want to say anyway is: I run into friends I don't recognize until I read their name badges. |
| | The conversation is winding down, but not completely. Now it's on identity. The guy behind me is talking about how we really need to control our identities personally, and can't leave it up to the feds or corporations. I pointed him, and the group, to Ping. |
| | Lane just pointed out that "some of us are with us, and not with us. Like Peter here." (See picture above). I can hear Lane mentally say, "Peter, is there something you' like to share with the rest of the class?" Thanks to blogging, the answer is Yes — to the whole fucking world. |
Boing Cubed
| | I'm sitting in Room 8A at the Online Political Advocacy and Organizing panel here at SXSW, listening to a Gene Crick of MAIN.org, whose face is the map of Texas (and whose voice is about as Tixis as it gits), talk about outreach and teaching low- and no-bandwidth folks (the Great Underserved) about the Internet. Good stuff. I love it. I can also hear what these guys are saying, which wasn't the case down the hall at The Revolution Isn't Over. That room is dark and the sound is inaudible. No reason to stay, especially since Steven Levy apparently couldn't make it to the panel. |
| | But this room here isn't only a much more well-lit and friendly one (thick with Goodness), but one that's thick with w-fi! The ID is boingboing, which makes me think that Cory is behind it. He's here, so it's likely. |
| | Ah! It's true. Thanks, dude. |
Top of the Age to ya
| | I love this picture of Long Island, which also includes all of New Jersey, downstate New York and most of Connecticut. What's coolest about it is that it helps visualize Long Island's provenance: it was dumped there, marking the southern edge of the last great ice age. When Earth last wore its biggest ice cap, this was the mark it left in the planet's brow. |
Sleepless in (and with) Austin
| | So: I'm in Austin (eventuallly, hopefully not finally) watching Phil Austin and the rest of the Firesign Theatre, who won't let me sleep because their Wierdly Cool TV Special is giving me flashbacks. |
| | I never watched these guys before, so it doesn't bother me that they look even older than I do. And um... am. |
| | Except for Phil. He looks younger than the others because he wrote to this very blog last week and he might be reading right now so I'd better suck up or shut up. |
| | I want to sleep but.... The boys are doing Nick Danger, Third Eye ... |
| | ..... it all came rushing back at me, like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist... |
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