Warning: upon inspection of my personal belongings after leaving Ephemerisle this past Monday, it has come to my attention that I have no idea where my ceremonial Mayan machete has gone off to.
[Reposted, my reply on The Contrarian's blog about Library as Punk]
The powerful thing about STYLE is that when it’s approached consciously by the style leaders — i.e. with the understanding that it can and will be co-opted by corporatism at any opporunity — it can become a powerful tool for subversion. (In fact that’s how corporations do it, but I’m not going into that specifically.)
Style is not just SEEMING; it is also DOING. Humans have this interesting capacity for deciphering fakes and phonies from doers and believers. Something “feels wrong”, and it’s in that moment — a micromoment that happens all over the world a hundred times a second — that a choice is made: is part of this style an irony that encompasses NOT-doing (and so is fair-game for collection into the vast consumptive morass), or is this style one that must necessarily contain DOING?
The answer to this question comes from exemplars.
Why do we exhort our teenagers to be better examples for their younger siblings? Why do we chide fathers for not practicing what they preach? Why do we consider it the ultimate punk rock betrayal to “sell out” — i.e. to apparently give in to the commercialism that punk-ism alleged to intend to short-circuit?
Because the way you protect a style that incorporates a sort of DOING that you want to encourage is to make sure there are enough enviable persons being visible in that style and incorporating that DOING.
To bring it back to ground level, the point I’m making here is that Punk’s Not Dead, not fully dead, unless you proclaim that it’s dead and there’s no way you can be an exemplar of true punk.
So if punkness is to embody a certain DOING and not simply an ironic sort of SEEMING: take back the style.
In other words: I want to see librarians wearing spikes and sporting mohawks.
…Or flannel and ripped jeans. Or cat-eye glasses and leopard print dresses.
…Or none of the above. Because just saying “fuck off I’m a librarian” is pretty punk too.
Rarely does a pattern of reactions towards me incite my ire, so the fact that I’m peeved means I really ought to write.
From many different angles I’ve been confronted with a guilt-laden invective against the use of my handheld computer (i.e. iPhone) for ongoing communiques, most usually via Twitter.
Human traditionalists: I see your argument. I could go with it. But I don’t. You can go your way; I’m happy going mine.
What I experience goes beyond criticism, however. It generally breaches undercurrents of anger and fear (arguably the same thing), bringing implications of threat: that to fail to attack the exuberantly transhumanist (such as myself) constitutes tacit acceptance of subservience to technology and a rejection of such ideals as the purity of meatspace serendpity and community.
Well how about this: What if mastering a form of instantaneous global communication within a network of social peers of my own choosing isn’t dehumanizing — it’s extrahumanizing.
What if this quasi-Luddite conservatism of the everyday is nothing but quaint, irrelevant glorification of meatspace-exclusive experience, no more valid than drug war prudishness?
I honestly feel as though I’m sensing the newest incarnation of cultural backlash, a trend of discrimination against the hyperconnected that will amplify as we continue the inexorable march towards a post-human future of technological symbiosis.
I see the neuroplasticity of the brain and I disregard the Old World attitude of optimization for onboard memory; offloading to peripherals to allow for optimization of more uniquely human strengths such as pattern-matching, semiotics, and intuition makes sense.
I choose memes; cyberneticism; techgnosis.
Technology is not “it”. But neither is humanity “it”.
Addendum: I frequently exhibit cries of frustration with my gadgetry. But make no mistake: it’s their lack of efficacy and clumsy “integration” with the everyday that irritates me. I’ll be the first in line for the Google Maps overlay implant in my retina.
People have taken to calling me “Ms. Web 2.0″ and “social media maven” and whatnot. This is hilarious to me because I didn’t set out to become anything of the sort — I’ve just been doing it as a consequence of my promotional activities on behalf of other people (and lately, my own radio show Subversive Science).
And when I talk about the sorts of analytics I do to prove the effectiveness of my actions on Twitter or Facebook or what-have-you, the usual reaction is, where did you learn to do internet marketing?
At Alameda Natural Grocery yesterday, I encountered a family man buying two cases of Synergy Kombucha, along with many baskets of produce and several gallons of raw milk — clearly a family with a routine grocery list of staple items they buy regularly in bulk. They were hurriedly placing things from their cart onto the conveyor belt to check out, with the wife running to and fro to grab more items they’d forgot.
Their hurry was evident, but as a kombucha brewer I couldn’t help but comment, “wow, you must love that stuff!”
“Oh yes,” answered the man, “it’s like our soda.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed, growing curious, “you drink that much of it and don’t brew it yourself?”
The man suddenly took on a slightly suspecting look, as if I were about to accuse him of something. “You mean with the jar in the attic and the weird pancake and all that?”
I chuckled. “Well, sure. I don’t keep mine in the attic, more like the library. It’s pretty clean.”
“The library, eh. Well no,” said the man, “we don’t brew it. Ick. No thank you.”
I couldn’t resist prodding. “So you drink that much of it but you won’t brew it? Huh!” Wanting to soften the interaction, as I noticed the man turning away to coordinate with his wife to make sure they had everything they needed, I added, “Didn’t mean to bother you, I was just curious!” He looked a bit relieved.
Interesting. A family completely sold on the concept of kombucha, so enamored that they’ll pre-buy their kombucha in boxes to supply them with a $3 bottle every day, complete with active yeast bits floating around and all, but not willing to brew it themselves for ickiness reasons! That’s a cross-section of the kombucha aficionado market I hadn’t imagined.
I just got a whole bunch of random good mojo and bad shit dumped on me over the past 10 days.
It’s 1 am and I have a commitment in the early morning, so I’m going to bed before I start typing anything significant. Instead I’ll cop out with a bunch of twitter hash-tags:
#fopl
#w2e
#cultureclash
#piratecatradio
#hackathon
And by the way, if you want to swing by the Web 2.0 Expo, you can get a free floor pass by registering with this code: websf09hack
What makes a game a game?
The world — and by “world” I of course mean “everybody who’s at SXSW right now” — is all a-twitter about FourSquare, a website aiming to turn your social life into an adventure game complete with experience points and trophies (they call ‘em badges), and the self-proclaimed sequel to the ill-fated Dodgeball. While I am definitely #notatsxsw, the flood of SXSW tweets about #foursquare got me more than a little curious.
So I signed up, and of course my four bigshot social media maven friends (who are NOT #notatsxsw) were already on there. I poke around a bit, getting a feel for what would be the “action” of this game. The site is brand spanking new, so while the mechanics are largely in place, the content is not.
It takes me 2 minutes to realize you could rack up a ton of points just clicking “sure I done that” on lots of random tasks. My immediate reaction: this is a web-based button-masher. So of course, since my brash editorial brain craves a global audience, I took it right to Twitter:
It’s my first video log. VLOG! I have a “serious” camera, but I decided to “keep it real” and just use the webcam on my laptop.
I’m well aware I need a haircut, a kick in the pants, and a stern talking to. And yeah, there’s some glare on my glasses from the screen. TOO BAD!
I am splitting.
Not in the “I’m outta here!” sense, but in the biological cell mitosis sense.
