I'm going to try trackback with Blog Pilgrim again.
I took a short break to look at the news, and I find out that he's getting huffy again.
I'm not very good at fixing things. Two months ago, I wrote about fixing the espresso machine, and it worked for a while, but now the pump isn't working. I'm not sure if it means the machine is totalled or not. In any case, maybe there's something I can fix.
I'm going to see if I can fix the words, the design, the lights, the circuits, the electrical impulses that make up my web content.
1. Archive journal entries and remove them from home page;
2. Make home page more of a site map; and
3. Give the three main sites -- home page, small streams, and blog pilgrim -- a common design theme.
I'm going to try to keep track of a few rules of thumb while I do this. The first is this: remember how things were before you started monkeying around. Especially important if you turn the background black and your type is black; the second is if you're using screws or small parts, put them in a little dish.
You can call this a wonderful thing found on the way to discovering other things. I was trying to think of examples of advanced technologies that don't really advance anything: How gas barbecues don't really improve on charcoal barbecues; How leaf blowers are a step back from rakes; Perhaps even how writing on-line isn't as satisfying as writing in a journal. How we miss so much, we miss unexpected encounters with beauty, we miss touch, we miss external cues that help us find our place in the world. In place of that we get a lot of shiny, noisy crap. So I checked out Donald Norman's site to see what kind of related information I could find, but instead got to read what he had to say about the connection between writing and design.
Technology shows up where you least expected it.
In order to light one of the burners on our stove, we have to blow on it. Sometimes I don't know if the gas is going to build up so much and then ignite, blowing off my eyebrows. I would consider this needed sequence in lighting the stove a kludge, but it's one that doesn't impede my progress much, and I'm actually quite skilled in producing the needed breeze. So I guess you could call it a benign kludge. How many benign kludges, I wonder, are there in my life?
Maybe the war in Iraq has directed my thoughts toward Gandhi, a not altogether pleasant man or impressive-looking, but as the name "Mahatma" signified, a holy man, a "great soul." Gandhi led the second most populous nation to independence. One of the ways he did this was through the encouragement of homespun, spinning one's own yarn for fabric specifically, and the encouragement of village-based industries in general. Gandhi once walked to the sea to make his own salt, against the law in the British-ruled India. As he walked he gathered thousands of followers.
I, myself, set out on a journey to follow Gandhi, at least in a google search for the origins of the quote "it takes a lot of money to keep Gandhi in homespun." I couldn't find out who made the quote or when it was made. The remark would seem to reflect poorly on Gandhi and his efforts to create a new economic system. But perhaps a failing economy based on meaningful labor is preferrable to a successful economy built on maximizing profits and surplus value.
So why am I posting this under the category "project." Well I was at the Mattress Factory last night looking at James Turrell exhibits, and I saw a binder with an excerpt of Marcel Minnaert's The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air, a book that was written in a style that is ripe for parody. When I woke this morning that's it, that's the third project, a number of parodies, or perhaps, profanities, dirty skeletons, using the publishing powers of the computer and the internet. But the profanities are only used as a palette for a larger narrative. I don't know let's just say a soul or a number of souls are at stake.
I still haven't gotten to why Gandhi is related to the subject, and perhaps I have not fleshed out what I mean by palette. Bear with me. All will be revealed.
I guess you can file this under political correctness:
Charlie Daniels makes a statement.
Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks makes a statement.
Some rodeo attendee decides to sit down during a Lee Greenwood song.
Someone responds to Charlie Daniels' statement and loses her job.
Jeff Walls of Twangzine gives things a little perspective.
Eric Olsen of Blogcritics says you gotta know the territory.
In the Giant Eagle the other day, stacks of boxes of bird seed were on special. It's nearly spring and what with the birds atwitter, it's good to find bird seed so clearly available and on sale. I do think, however, that the birds could have used the seed more about six weeks ago. It's the job of the merchant, though, to gauge customers' appetites, not necessarily birds' appetites.
thought. What I didn't get to in the last entry was Information Renaissance's Gene Hastings' quote about "It's not about giving them a Mercedes Benz. It's about building the highway."
So what are the costs of allowing everybody on the internet? Costs of PCs are rapidly declining, but that tells only part of the story. Cellphones now have the capacity to post to the web, not only text, but images. As time goes by, the cost of entry will go down and down. So what's the problem? Is there a Digital Divide? As FCC Chairman Michael Powell describes it we also have a Mercedes Benz Divide. Everyone would like to own the latest, nicest thing.
I'm talking with an editor about a story on broadband, and he's worried that "there is not enough conflict or tension, enough of an issue at stake, a problem to be solved." One conflict I see was described by Rev. Wayne Peck of Pittsburgh's Community House Literacy Project:
The situation is much like that of the oil industry 100 years ago. Just like John D. Rockefeller, the big companies control the pipes and the costs.
Implicit in that statement is that there's a problem with one person or a thousand people controlling production. The conflict becomes greater when one looks at the nature of the internet. The internet does not care who you are what you upload or download (remember, no one knows you're a dog when you're on the internet.) The internet doesn't care if you're a telco executive, a millionaire, or a thirteen year old in Pittsburgh's Central North Side.
So you have, not even a technology, but a protocol, that says everyone's admitted, you don't have to have keys. Doc Searls and David Weinberger describe this best in World of Ends. And then you have a business model that says, "you have to have keys." So I think you can summarize the conflict this way: The internet could work for everybody, but now it only works for a few.
I guess I can describe what I'm putting in here. This blog will contain my general writing. So I'm going to remove general journal entries from my home page. Maybe I'll put a statement of purpose on my home page. As soon as I find a purpose, I'll state it. From now on I'll put any blog about blogging or spirituality on Blog Pilgrim, which is a bloxsom blog. I still want to keep that because of the minimalist software which I may try some time to understand.