Freud on super-heroes and super-villains?
The man who, in consequence of his unyielding constitution, cannot fall in with this suppression of instinct, becomes a ‘criminal’, an ‘outlaw’, in the face of society – unless his social position or his exceptional capacities enable him to impose himself upon it as a great man, a ‘hero’.
‘Civilised’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness (1908)
A few CSS links from around the internet recently:
I’ll be buggered if I can figure out how to get photo-messaging or e-mail or the interweb working on my little T610, which they don’t tell you but doesn’t actually make images of a decent useful size (not 640×480, but 288×352 of all sizes). I’ve fiddled with the settings incessantly. Maybe I need to talk to the company themselves. Anyway – I’ll be buggered if I can send ’em, but I can sure as hell take ’em. Presenting a collage of the first few days with my new phone…
I’ve been hearing the same sentiments by a lot of people over the last few months in different types of language. Some say The Internet is Shit. Some others say that Virtual Community has died. Without wanting to doubt the good intentions and aspiration of all the people who want to make more of the world in which they live, I can tell you right now why the internet matters and why it is not shit. While it’s true that people around the world are lamenting that there’s not enough of ‘precisely the right kind of information’ to finish their term-papers, the internet is more important than that. Take for example the case of support groups for gay and lesbian teenagers. Gay teenagers are two to three times to attempt suicide and two to three times more likely to succeed – and why? Because they think they’re completely alone in the world and they have no way of connecting with other gay teenagers. Over the last few years that’s all changed – I’ve seen it happening. Gay teenagers are exploring over the internet first – they’re finding other people like themselves, getting advice and support and connecting to a wider community. Hopefully the result will be less death, less depression and less wasted years.
And here are some other reasons why the internet is not shit and why virtual community is not dead: alcoholism, disabilities, addiction, mental health, prostate cancer, teen health… I could go on all day. Frankly, I don’t care who thinks I’m nuts or an evangelist or whatever, but as far as I’m concerned the internet has improved people’s lives, helped them understand and deal with health problems, eased depression, connected the lonely and the disconnected and been a fount of information on pretty much every subject in the world. I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks about it – I’m proud of it and proud of my tiny corner of it.
Are you interested in the political implications of weblogs and social software? Then come to Can Weblogs Change Politics? – an event held in the House of Commons on July 14th. Here’s an quick excerpt from the proposed topics of discussion:
“Weblogs (ëblogsí) and associated “social software” tools have been this yearís big news online. But can they be used politically, and if so, how and to what end?”
I’m really looking forward to discussing this component of the programme, because I think that it’s one of those statements that could only be made by someone directly involved in politics. The assumption seems to be that the weblogging publishing system is a tool created that one could use to effect political change – presumably by allowing MPs to communicate more fully with their constituents or by being a point to actively campaign around. What’s completely missed are the potential implications of a massive group of people interacting with each other and with information and news in massively more active ways. We’re not in that kind of world yet, and indeed we may not ever be, but if large blocks of the citizenry started to organise their relationships with each other, with information provision and with government and mass media then that would have a dramatic effect on political life in this country. When we see the whole Trent Lott debacle in the States, and the effect and importance (for good or evil) of people like Glenn Reynolds who quickly became politicised loci for massive numbers of warbloggers, then the question stops being “Can they be used politically?” and starts being, “Are they changing the nature of the citizenry?”. And if you need some help with that one, check out GW Bush’s presidential campaigning website and particularly the middle panel of this page…
So anyway – it should be a good debate, even though (typically) all the invited parties seem to be relatively short-term webloggers who are employing them as tool to facilitate their day-jobs. It’s a shame that there aren’t any representatives of the culture itself on the panel. I’d have liked to have seen one of the UK’s directly political (or community ’embedded’) webloggers (the Politx crew for example) represented. But the UK has always been more suspicious of trends and behaviour that emerges from the masses than the States has, so I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised…
So the first members of the weblogging extended family have been exposed to AOL’s proposed new weblogging tools. The general consensus seems to be that they are of surprisingly good quality and that they are approaching the service more like LiveJournal than Blogger, Typepad or MT. I’m going to need to ponder this stuff a little more before I’m going to be comfortable presenting an opinion. In the meantime – here are the links:
It’s been a slow-posting week on plasticbag.org and that’s directly related to fast-moving, sleepless, hectic first week of new job acclimatisation. It’s still far too early to get a sense of what our every-day work is going to be like, but if it’s anything like what we’ve been doing so far then it’s going to be extraordinarily good fun.
Sometimes at UpMyStreet I’d lament the fact that working life was so infrequently like The West Wing. I’d developed a bit of a taste for thrusting, self-determining creative work while working for the BBC’s Making it Happen project, but UpMyStreet – for all the good work we did and all the cool people I met when I worked there – was not that kind of place. It didn’t have that kind of atmosphere at all.
This job has West Wing potential. Serious West Wing potential in fact… (Guess who was in the building on Friday). I can already see myself striding through corridors telling people about wheat yields in Arkansas, colliding with other walking-conversations about speech-writing and Congress. Will I fall over the camera? Will I remember my lines?
Ok. So this brief post is so entirely not about social software or weblogs or technology or futurism or ‘the industry’. This post is – well – it’s quite a lot more shallow than that. This post (which is nearly over) is quite simply about really really hot people. In particular one really really hot person. In particular this really really hot person – currently showing in a cinema near you… Dear God… Dear beautiful beautiful God…
The web splinters that have been working their way under my typing fingernails today include:
I’ll tell you something for nothing. I’m beginning not to care who’s right about this whole bloody RSS thing. Is it Dave? Is it Mark? Is it the Penry the mild-mannered janitor? I know it’s an important debate, and I know that the world’s not complete unless we have a fourth, fifth and sixth syndication format, and I know that I’m being dismissive of a legitimate and complex debate, but you know on the other hand…