if there is an image to go with this, i have yet to come across it. a complete lack of graphic vision defines me as a web presence and leaves me scavenging for saying pictures....
so in one way, the exemption of art on this page is the ultimate visual supplement to what i have to say....
what is it that makes the web a new medium?!?
i had a dream! i dreamt that maybe the years i spent leartning about the internet, intellectually, practically, weren't entirely wasted.
i used to believe in the net as a new medium, i'm not so sure anymore
e-mail is a new form of person-to-person communication.
newsgroups are a new form topic-specific group communication.
chat, i guess, regardless of how intensely it bores me, is a new form
of doctors waiting-room, of global smalltalk.
the web, however seems to be a global billboard. an electronic, world-wide
variation on those massive poster-stands along the free-ways of the world.
in most incarnations intensely boring, and all but new.
it's a worn world of corporate america reaching out to the rest of the
world. it's not new, not interesting and it's hyped beyond belief.
but looking at it from the inside, user of all these new forms of communication, there is a sparkle of hope that the web, as is hasn't found it's natural place in the world, hasn't evolved into something usable, exactly because it is amongst all of the above, the only truly new medium.
e-mail and newsgroups have been along a while longer than the web, and have already found their natural place in the jungle of communications. chat in my humble opinion has found it's niche as a fun interactive smalltalk session.
but the web itself offers so many unique possibilities, such a profound new metaphor for communication, that it needs lmore time to come of age.
as you may have gathered the current state of the web holds very little of interest for me. hell, on-line shopping is cool, and it saves me money, but there is nothing new about it. instant global news is cool, interactive and customisable, but does it really change the essence of the news that cnn stuffs down our throats? on-line gaming might be cool if i wasn't such a sore loser, but that also, however different from any previous gaming exoerience is just that, a game to be played. all that is very well, but if that is all there is to the web, i'd rather spend my time doing volunteer work in the 3rd world, than being an internet systems developer. at least that way i'd be doing something worth-while.
well, that, i guess, is part of the explanation given elsewhere, as to why this site exists. it's not that this site is anything profoundly new, or does anything worthwhile for anyone except mysel (not something to be belittled), it's that this site, writeing this intense junk, let's me breathe and live the web. let's me feel it on my body, let's me form opinions.
it's another way of getting to the phenomenon, of touching it in a personal way, of getting to know it. that, i hope can give me the basis i need to ride the way of newness that is slowly rising from the murky ooze that is the www.
sound holy? or unholy? well, i guess it feels that way to me. as isaid i had a dream, and i wasn't kidding. there is something in the web that is so close to me, something that speaks to me.
i love the web, it is me.... i am entirely interdisciplinary. my method is the mixing of all knowledge and experience, the attempt to break down the barrier between different kinds of knowledge and experience. in that way i guess it's post-modern. that i am post-modern.
that i belive the only one who can judge and sort out and mix the information that hits my windscreen is me. that i do this based on experience, on emotions, on feelings og right and wrong, that are in their extreme, random.
that so many things in my life are based on inexplicable details like my animosity for a certain belief, or my love for another. a composite of childhood experiences, upbringing, the interaction i have with the people i cross paths with. some of them touching me openly, changing the way i think in such a way that there can be no doubt, while others maybe pass on unnoticed, in my mind unimportant, yet measured up against my later dispositions, who is to say which of the two meant more to me in fact.
it's a strange, faithless thought, this post-modern, extreme interdisciplinary, "it's me-me-me that counts". but to me it's not so much egotistic as it is realistic.
maybe it would become me well to get to know some of the big thinkers of this century, to study the essence of knowledge, faith and essence. maybe not. maybe i will, maybe i'll just dig wells in the 3rd world. but in each of us is a desire to move in a sopecific direction in life. to be something as measured up against a set of more or less conscious ideals. for some it is social welfare, security or maybe power and wealth. for me it is travel, seeing the world constantly changing my perspective. and the day i can look at people, and myself and know that one iseal is as good as any other, that we are all just people trying to, live our lives in a fashion that we think of as good, that day i think i will have taken a great step towards being the person i really want to be.
in a way the hardest person to accept is oneself. the greatest bigotry and xenophobia is the one we display to ourselves, the fear we have of the process that is life..... and death...
love
tomas