{twice recently I've come across comments on the 'public' aspects of this, this blogging thing, one I forget who it was, delivered that 'the internet never forgets so be careful what you put out there' trope, and the other was some kerfluffle involving Scripting News, and someone with a grudge against Dave Winer, whose blog that is. these are green room tics from people who are just now getting the hit of this mass mind-meld that's taking place. it's as though Scientology had suddenly become a viable political party. as though Trekkies had taken over all the cable companies in America. weird and/or creepy, with a cartoonish foundation. but it's real. I guarantee you, at least for the near future, if you show up on anybody's radar with any kind of weight, you will have no privacy, no certainty of it, not even a reasonable certainty of it not here, not online, and not within earshot of most modern communications appliances. the feeling that gives me, and I'm speaking from so outside it I might as well be commenting on some Martian news hour, is real close to what I ran into a few times in the mid and late 70's. these college kids who had de-socialized through whatever means, and then re-socialized themselves in strange little clots of ahistoric novelty, pastless and politically correct. novum hominum. whatever. but back then it was here-and-there and a very minor blip, a small phenomenon. now it's Lord of The Flies with broadband. many people yet have optimism around this, that we can mature into the responsibilities inherent in power like that, the responsibilities of the power of unlimited observation, but I'm disheartened, nauseated by it. not for what it threatens me with, that's the subtext here, I haven't had more than a few sessions at a keyboard anywhere online that was clear and private, solo, and the last time was the morning of September 11, 2001, when the auditors were too busy watching other things.
so you can see I might have ambivalent feelings about a lot of these issues. not about self-censoring though. I publish certain things here, and at a couple of other blogs, and I edit them a little afterward, mostly grammar and clarity stuff. I have rules about that that evolve as I go along. I don't have any illusions that anything I do is private. anything I look at, anything I read or watch here, is done knowing there's someone else there watching too, someone I despise at best, all mixed in with 'innocent' children who have no business being here. and of course it affects what I do, but that's the defiance, not pretending exactly, but carrying on as though there was no one evalutating every word I type before I send it, reading each email, examining each web site I go to, and all the invisible work involved in attaining whatever it is the goals of all that are. so at the same time I'm writing as though the surface reality was all there is, that this is being written in a little snap-in created by the Blogspot crew, and that I'm writing it in privacy at home, and at the same time knowing and especially feeling the slimy fingers of prying inferior consciousnesses all over it. and some of the things I do are nothing but a response to that. I'm sure there are ways through all this that would be more fun, but I've made my choice, made it a long time ago, willingly sacrificed a lot of what I was rather than see it used by what was going to take it by force if it wasn't given.}
posted by Juke at 2:59 PM [edit]