creativity/machine

Just came across the online journal electronic book review. Some very interesting editorial content, essays and articles on “techno capitalism” and “electro poetics”, including some work by not-so-lightweight theorists, e.g. Mark Poster.

If you have coined a word or expression specific to the blogosphere (there’s one for a start), submit it to Samizdata’s Blog Glossary quick smart, and get your name up in lights. Or if you are a mere mortal, go there and check it out anyway.

There were a few there that were new to me and highly amusing:

“Barking moonbat (noun). Someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be.”

“Link orgy (expression). When a blogger finds that he has been linked by multiple sites, or has been added to several blogrolls, in a short time.”

…which is obviously a logical extension of:

“Link whore (noun). A blogger (qv) who will go to any lengths to get other bloggers to link to them (the term is usually intended to be humourous). Also: Link slut. Both terms are in fact non-gender specific.”

I thought it was timely to reproduce some of the late Edward Said’s typically perceptive, but ultimately optimistic, thoughts on the alternatives to mass mediated culture - in particular the role of the independent intellectual, from which I think we can extrapolate to the role of the blogger:

On one side, a half-dozen enormous multinationals presided over by a handful of men control most of the world’s supply of images and news. On the other, there are the independent intellectuals who actually form an incipient community, physically separated from each other but connected variously to a great number of activist communities shunned by the main media but who have at their disposal other kinds of what [Jonathan] Swift sarcastically called oratorical machines. Think of what an impressive range of opportunities is offered by the lecture platform, the pamphlet, radio, alternative journals, the interview form, the rally, church pulpit and the Internet, to name only a few. True, it is a considerable disadvantage to realize that one is unlikely to get asked onto the PBS NewsHour or ABC Nightline, or if one is in fact asked, that only an isolated fugitive minute will be offered. But then other occasions present themselves, not in the soundbite format but rather in more extended stretches of time. . . . The emancipatory potential — and the threats to it — of this new situation mustn’t be underestimated. . . .

[continued at netvironments, where there is a lengthy tribute to Edward Said as well as quotes by/about him and links to related articles]

Gary also draws my attention to his defence of Said’s work on Orientalism from the attacks of Australian anti-culturalist Keith Windschuttle.

ishkur’s guide to electronic music v2.0 is online. It’s a Flash presentation with 100+ genres well mapped out according to stylistic affinities as well as chronological “development”. You have to question the linear evolution model, but once you get past the long-winded intro animation, it’s all good fun, and there are multiple audio examples for each genre. Definitely worth a look, whether to learn the basics or, if you are a connoisseur already, simply to fly into an apoplectic rage at everything you think is just soooo wrong.

I’m off to Sydney for a few days - back on Monday.

MIT OpenCourseWare has now officially launched with hundreds of online courses. Dilettantes, start your engines! More seriously, there is some really interesting material available, including video “lectures” by staff and guest speakers. Is it just me, or is MIT dead sexy?

Alex from Relevant History provides a nice counterweight to all the mass amateurisation hoopla, reminding us of what Wimbledon tennis commentators never forgot :

The notion that being a ‘professional’ is a good thing, and that professionals know more than amateurs, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the mid-1800s, being a ‘professional’ meant that you were a shill, a hired gun: you dealt in skill or knowledge rather than coal, but you weren’t that much higher than the collier. The people who had real credibility were amateurs.

He goes on to explain how and why. It’s entertainingly written, check it out.

[found via Public Opinion]

Anne Galloway has put together an interesting post on interdisciplinarity (specifically concerning sociology, anthropology and ubiquitous computing). The comments to her post link back to earlier questions about the balance between readability and complexity that I think are relevant, not only to academic blogs, but to all specialist writing (boy, the unadulterated geek talk of some tech blogs gets me down at times!).

There are two different issues here, though, aren’t there? One is interdisciplinary research/dialogue, and the other is the problem of finding an appropriate register for blog posts that connect to our research interests. The writing needs to be clear without being simplistic, and accurate without being dense, arcane, or simply boring. Annotation is also important here - most of the time it is possible to find something online that provides background or another perspective on the topic under discussion. And if the reader comes across something difficult or new, there’s always Google.

Clearly, the combination of lucidity and reasonable annotation in research blogs is an indication of a particular stance towards both (inter)disciplinarity and the world beyond the academy and is to be cheered. Again, coming from cultural studies, it is hard not to notice the jargonistic wankery of some writing - and more jargon, we don’t need.

Further to the mp3.com thing, I thought I’d link to their artists’ page from about 1997 or so through the brilliant Internet Archive Wayback Machine. No luck, though - mp3.com has blocked robots. Very interesting, especially as I have previously accessed their archived pages this way (only a couple of months ago I think). I noticed years ago that they were in the habit of removing bulletin board posts after only a few months, but this takes the cake.

It could all be connected to the apparent inevitability of mp3.com either shutting up shop or turning into something ugly. According to an admin post on the one “free” bulletin board left standing (sorry I can’t link to it - requires login):”MP3.com is streamlining aspects of its U.S. operations in preparation for an asset sale consistent with VUNet USA’s broader strategy of selling its online entertainment properties.” This is supposedly why they are no longer accepting new “free” signups (but why are they still accepting “paid” ones?).

So another one bites the dust. Let’s hope that new player magnatune can do better.

More sociobiology: Steven Johnson’s article Emerging Technology: Music of the Swarms is about music software that uses an analogy between the semi-structured patterns of jazz improvisation and the swarming behaviour of bees to teach computers how to “improvise”.

In Tim Blackwell’s computerized “free improv” compositions, the notes sometimes fly together in formation, resembling bird flocks, instead of buzzing around a target like a swarm of bees. The resulting sound is similar to a musical phrase repeated over and over, but with slight variations.

There are several articles by the usual suspects about the more conventional topics for swarm theory (flash mobs, urban environments, mobile technologies) at The Feature.