plasticbag.org

Due to a particularly interesting and apparently “old-fashioned” and “biologically determinist” section in Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine (Chapter 10: ‘An orgasm saved my life’), I’ve been scouring the web for information on evolutionary psychology’s positions on homosexuality. As yet, my aims remain relatively unrewarded, but I have found an astonishing document of an almost staggeringly dubious nature, which may or may not be true: “The Evolutionary Psychology of Human Sex and Gender”. One of the horrors of the Internet is, of course, that there is a lot of information but little way of judging what parts of that information are accurate and based on expertise or authority. I’m going to be pondering this one for a while, I fear.

So it’s nearly 11pm and I get a text message from my flatmates which demands to know what film Nick Nolte and Treat Williams have been in with a room full of monsters (or something like that). So I do a search on IMDB and it says that the only film that they have been in together is: Mulholland Falls. I assume that monsters was supposed to read Mobsters as that’s what the film is about, and predictive text input is always a little buggy. So I send a message back telling them that and get a reply saying that apparently the correct answer was Deep Rising. So I feel let down by the IMDB and suddenly concerned about the kinds of questions that my flatmates ask me long distance on a Tuesday evening.

Awesome new stuff from Apple includes: itunes (free MP3 encoder / ripper / player), omnipotently powerful powermacs and sickeningly gorgeous new powerbooks [design in detail]. Note to self: it is very important that my new job (whatsoever that may be) can provide me with enough money to buy a powerbook.

As Organizine shuts its doors, and everyone asks why, one sole piece of comment comes from its creator: “Mistakes were made”.

I just stumbled upon what I assume to be an old interview with Jason Kottke, in which he is asked Seven Questions – mostly about Weblogging. It must get very frustrating for him to be known for a site that encapsulates only a fraction of his work on the net.

A new article about weblogs, in which I am name-checked (along with blogger, megnut.com, kottke.org, web queeries and medianews.org) illustrates the gulf that lies between journalists and the finished product. While the feature itself says:

[Big Issue Jan 8-14 2001] “Essential Multimedia: Read my diary” “To the uninitiated, bloggers can seem narcissistic and slightly geeky, but by putting their lives online they’re probably closer to the DIY utopian dreams of the early internet pioneers than any dotcom ‘cash cow’ can ever be.”

… the pull quote (the part that is larger than the main text and sits in the middle of the article to encourage people to read it), in a piece of impressively ‘missing the point’ editing reads as follows:

“They’re geeky, but they’re close to the DIY dreams of the early internet.”

So my first day back at work after handing in my notice went by fairly smoothly. It kind of feels like everyone is looking at me like I might snap at any moment and douse them in petrol, which couldn’t really be further from the truth. As it is I feel this really strange mixture of horror and delight at my actions.

Because I am leaving, I don’t feel as emotionally involved in the site and the decisions that are made about it. This means that work itself has become quite relaxing. And as the stress fades, the things that I love about the company are becoming clearer to me: the people I work with are almost uniformly great and I love the company’s attitude and outlook. This then triggers the horror – I’ve handed in my notice. Oh my god. But it only lasts a moment. I know that if I stayed I’d be fighting the frustration daily.

by Matthew Ford [e-mail]

Bloggers scour the internet, blog what interests them, read other blogs, and if they see something they like, they blog it on their own blogs too.

Tom is disappointed by the lack of debauchery at his office party, passionate about the creative potential of the web and sometimes strangers like his site enough to send him presents. Tom is a blogger and I know all about him because for the last few months I’ve been reading his weblog (www.plasticbag.org).

In its purest form a weblog (or blog) is a collection of links, commentary and often intimate diary-style content. Blogging is a DIY publishing phenomenon thousands strong, made possible by Pyra, a company that produces a feww internet application called Blogger (www.blogger.com).

To the uninitiated, bloggers can seem narcissistic and slightly geeky, but by putting their lives online they’re probably closer to the DIY utopian dreams of the early internet pioneers than any dotcom ‘cash cow’ can ever be.

Websites used to have to be slowly hand-coded, but Blogger makes it possible to set up a site in minutes, edit it in seconds, and work on it anywhere with internet access. The result is an international, inconnected community.

Some cult sites get thousands of visitors every day, develop a devoted community of readers, and inspire soap opera-style discussion. Two of the most influential US bloggers – Meg (www.megnut.com) and Jason (www.kottke.org) – were outed when sleuths discovered their private romance through clues on their sites.

Bloggers frequently copy, parody and play with ideas from each other’s sites. Many bloggers work in internet-related jobs, and blogs are often the source of trends that are hyped across the web. The ease of publishing on blogs allows individuals to talk to the world, perhaps in a way they couldn’t talk to their friends and family?cated to special interest groups like gay politics (www.hit-or-miss.org/queeries) or media gossip www.medianews.org).

Blogging can seem a strange world, but it’s free, playful and constantly innovative. Isn’t that everything the net should be about?

A quick happy birthday to David Bowie, a tremendously creative individual and an influence to every person in the world who ever wanted to “gazelle on stage and look pleased with [themselves]”.

The short interview I gave to the Bookseller magazine about repurposing print content for the web is currently in print (5th Jan 2001): “Chat Room”. I’d appreciate input from anyone in the industry who would like to comment upon it. [e-mail: tom@plasticbag.org]