|
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
It hurts a lot. But only at first. 
| | Branding is when you say to yourself,
"that slab of meat on the hoof is mine"... |
Plug
| | My old pal Brad Kava has a new blog. Brad has been covering (and playing in) the Bay Area music and radio scenes for years, and really knows his stuff. Check it out. |
Wanna go to a great summer music festival?
| | As settings go, it really is Paradise. (Or, in the case of that last shot, right next to it.) |
| | Anyway, I bought tickets, and now I can't go, due to conflicting obligations. It's too late to return them, so I'm hoping to sell them. If you're interested, contact me, ASAP, at docATsearls.com. |
Today is yesterday tomorrow
| | I screwed something up by starting a new daily outline (that's how I write, here) with "2005/06/15" as today, in my daily "rules" for the blog, which I update manually. I can't seem to unscrew the problem. As a result, Wedntesday is in calendar limbo and my only choice is to keep posting to Tuesday. Here's hoping it works out somehow by tomorrow. |
Free advice
| | Jay Rosen has a great name (by request from NRO) for National Review's new media blog. Right Justified. Jay doesn't expect it to fly; but WFB should love it. Way back in The Day (or perhaps in the weeks before The Day — we're talking about The Sixties and Seventies here), my own thinking and writing (if not righting) was vastly informed, and often improved, by Buckley books with titles like Inveighing We Will Go. |
Gangway
Unmediated speech
| | Who controls your speech? Meaning, who tells you what you can and can't say? Who or what is your speech run through before others hear or read it? |
| | The history of the present Federal Communications Commission is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the airwaves, bringing with it a tyrant's notion of "decency." |
| | Not only was Doc wrong that the web is unmediated, but Dave didn't go far enough in explaining how it was differently mediated. It's going to be mediated by the right people, the people who created the new world, so that those other people don't destroy it. |
| | Now, Dave Weinberger may protest that he oversimplified and I'm leaping to conclusions or drawing the wrong inferences from his brief synopsis of what was probably a lengthy, and I'm quite certain scintillating, presentation. I don't think so, because what I'm objecting to is the attitude of entitlement exhibited by those who supposedly "get it." The guys who have a Cluetrain (tm) RailPass. The New Prometheans, bringing the light of networked, digital clarity to a benighted humanity. Thus securing for themselves a special place near the top of the hierarchy. The synopsis was sufficient to show me that that attitude was very much in evidence. |
| | Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. |
| | It's simple. The old boss, one major exemplar of which is the FCC, could throttle your speech and drive you off an entire medium because it defines what you do as "content" (http://fcc.gov/parents/content), and therefore "not protected by the First Amendment." It's also why Howard Stern is jumping from a one medium where his speech is restricted to another where it isn't. Yet. |
| | Meanwhile, all of us — you, Dave Rogers, David Weinberger and myself — can say what we damn well please here, in this... |
| | Well, what is this? A medium? Or a place? The distinction seems academic until it comes time to regulate it. Then it's all a matter of how you frame it. The results can (and will) be very different. |
| | Yet either way is right, technically: Yes, the Net is a medium; Yes, the Net is a place. The former, however, is a lot easier to control, while the latter is a lot easier to protect. |
| | Here's one way to tell the difference. Are you on the Net right now? Or through it? Prepositions tend to give away the methaphors that frame our thought — that supply the vocabularies we think and talk (literally) in terms of. |
| | Dave keeps insisting that, just because some of us (notably Cluetrain authors) speak at conferences, and have somewhat popular blogs (there are many that get far more traffic than either David Weinberger's or mine, for what little that's worth), that we're in charge of something. Or worse, that we're "selling" something, mostly out of self-interest. Sez Dave, |
| | Somebody's always trying to sell you something, and it ain't the truth. Mostly I think these conferences are about these folks selling themselves to each other. "Here's why we need to be in charge." |
| | David and I aren't trying to sell anybody a damn thing at the conferences where we speak. We're trying to give away an idea that's preciously rare, in spite of abundant evidence and opportunity to use it: that all of us are free, here — in this place — to speak freely, and be heard, and to serve as sources of ideas for others. |
| | Also that this is a freedom worth caring about, understanding, practicing, and fighting for. |
| | Think about the framing involved in this story here — and through which window (or portal) freedom to speak and write freely is currently being thrown. |
| | Okay, off to the plane... |
Taking it slow
| | I'm standing between the retractable line-control ribbons that form the zig-zag maze that contains the line of travelers flying SAS out of Copenhagen. One agent is working the line at a counter with seventeen check-in portals. She's under the display labeled 9, serving the same customer for the last ten minutes. It's 4:56am. My plane leaves at 6:55. I've been here since 4:30, when there were no agents at all. I was slow to get over here, so there are about fifty travelers ahead of me in the line. At this rate of movement (zero), and agent addition (one), I'm sure I'll make it. |
| | Mostly I'm playing with time while it scrolls to death. Credits: it's a nice airport (at least here at Terminal 3), and there's wi-fi. I'm typing this on the back of my luggage cart, using my briefcase as a desk. Works pretty well. |
There are responses to this message:The twisty tail and An Ode To The Cluetrain Gang, Phil Wolff, 6/15/05; 8:09:08 PM $45 a pop, Andrew Leyden, 6/15/05; 5:48:41 PM Re: Monday, June 13, 2005, Eric Eggertson, 6/14/05; 8:03:41 PM Re: Monday, June 13, 2005, Ted Gilchrist, 6/14/05; 3:48:25 PM
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
