Cephalopods!

I wish I could say that I haven't posted a blog in 10 days and I've been missing because I have been asleep. Unfortunately, today is not opposite day. Now here, I will address some random points in Lanier's argument that I find lacking, fitting, or making me wish I was in Palo Alto with him during the 1980s. This will happen in no particular order; I take medicine to help me organize my thoughts but this box and all the tabs I have open in Chrome negate any of that influence on my writing. And the music that's playing has lyrics, I'm distracted.
I think it makes Lanier sound like my grandfather when he complains that our culture's fascinations are any worse than the ones preceding it were. Preposterous! The kind of art I like most, in fact, involves the juxtaposition (often times through mashing...) of elements of our culture as a critique of it at large. I find it both aesthetically and intellectually pleasing. [Please click me and me - couple of my favorite artists' works]
Interestingly, it is for the same reason that draws me to these types of expression that allows me to sympathize with his despair over the state of culture today. The difference is that he takes the old systems seriously and yearns for an improvement over the status quo pre-internet. I don't see the status quo as improved, either, but I don't see it as diminished in quality because of the internet. It's always been bullshit, it's still bullshit (Thus marking the third use of that word on the blog so far). So what? It isn't any easier for an artist to get paid for his work, but is it actually any harder? I find that argument lacking.

Further ramblings

Something many people (me included) seem to have taken for granted about the internet is that the anonymous nature of discourse is the source of much of the vitriol and short-sighted or unbecoming comments/postings found online.
This argument seems to be falling apart now with the emergence of Facebook as the most popular, populated social networking site; most people go by their own names but I don't detect a major change in the etiquette of the majority of people that show up on my feed compared with the random comments on blogs I read or Youtube videos. The topics are typically more personal, of course, because they are meant to be amongst 'friends' but in many cases that only makes things worse...
Is it that the denizens of the web were conditioned previously into this ridiculousness by living with the anonymous internet that we are voluntarily waving away and failing to adjust their behavior accordingly? Or perhaps people actually don't realize yet that all of this is being recorded and their grandchildren will have no problem mining for choice quotes from their grandfather in his youth calling people "faggots," fighting with his girlfriend in a public space online, or arguing ferociously with his peers over trivial bullshit.
I am beginning to think that the more thoughtful of us were making an excuse before for everyone else by assigning blame to anonymity. To some people, the internet is not the same as a public park. Unfortunately for them, it actually is a public park... with a massive surveillance system in place and a stenographer. Thoughts?

Ramblings Concerning You Are Not A Gadget (Part 1), etc.

Really fascinating read; wanted to jot down notes as I went along so I could type them into this box (actually, I wrote that in pen first--caught me in a lie) but I had issues finding a suitable break point because I was so engaged with it. This is somewhat comical because it's written in tiny snippets with obvious places at which to break, but I didn't do any of that.
These concepts that Jaron Lanier so eloquently describes are exactly the types of ideas I have had floating around in my head for years, but I rarely have had the chance to articulate them to others. I want to print out bits of it and keep them handy to pass out to clients of mine.
Although I was very young (or perhaps because I was very young), I feel along with Lanier a sense of nostalgia for the earlier web (I choose the world earlier because I missed the real early web; my family joined the collective in 1997 and my love for the Internet and programming couldn't begin before then, and I was 9) because I can remember a time when rules and standards (externally and internally imposed) were actually up in the air and the big players of today were only mere ideas, if that.
I was in love with the Internet from the start; it blew my mind apart with all the possibilities it introduced for my nascent little nerd brain to ponder. I needed to understand how it worked and I needed to forge a space of my own there to share with the rest of the collective. Being a child, I had no conception of using it as a commercial vehicle; I made websites about the things that I loved so that I could collaborate with other people who shared my interests: other enthusiastic nerds who would chat over ICQ or IRC to help one another learn and grow as programmers just because we thought it was awesome.