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barondaveI added a tag to my LJ, "Hidden Minneapolis", for those who want to see the whole series. It's my only tag, so if should be easy to find... if you know how to use tags. Which I don't.
I hope I tagged all of the entries.
Going back several hundred LJ posts, a few things struck me:
1) I'm a really good photographer. Admittedly, I only post a small fraction of the pics I take, and only my favorites of those, so I'm not going to pretend to be objective. Still, going back several years of posts, through lower res cameras and scans, I'm enormously pleased with the body of work presented here. The galleries are a more complete archive, but LJ gets the ones I feel are best at the time. Some tell a story by themselves, many illuminate the entry and a few are just snapshots to record an event. Whee!
2) I'm pretty sure I've now made more LJ entries than I published apazines. Certainly, they're easier to do than mimeo or ditto. No ink, no postage, and able to reach a wide audience within seconds. Still, one of the major positive aspects of sf fandom, to me, is that fans tend to think in paragraphs.
Many people treat LJ entries like irc, with quick comments; sometimes not even complete sentences. This is fine; the web is big enough for all. The trend in social networking is away from longer usenet posts (many of which were pretty quick themselves) and toward smaller and smaller entries. Twitter and Facebook all seem more like texting from a cell phone, since many of the entries are texting from a cell phone. Again, I have no objection to this, but I disparage the lack of developed thoughts in a "you kids get off my lawn" sort of curmudgeonly way.
Not that I haven't made a quick comment or two. But most of my entries are mini-fanzines. At least, I hope they come off that way. I generally don't post unless I have something to say.
The major difference in publishing a fanzine vs. posting to LJ, beside the speed of communication, is, of course, the linking. Hypertext was always the power of the web, adding on to the speed of the net. Simply poking a half a thought onto the web seems regressive.
3) or perhaps 2 1/2) Bruce Schneier has written in the Wall Street Journal on how every electronic conversation is a permanent record and "Ephemeral conversation is dying." He isn't the first to make this point, but I think it's becoming apparent to more and more people, even those who don't use electronics as their major mode of communication. To an extent, I think it's becoming more than that: We're all becoming Isaac Asimov where we record every thought we have. There will be secrets, and people may keep their real thoughts close to the chest ala Shogun, but examples will be fewer and fewer.
Pretty soon, we'll all be in a 1984 dystopia where your private thoughts are known to a few who can manipulate you. Or in a more utopian world where we just accept that random thoughts are not a whole personality. I hope we get to the latter, but I fear we'll be held hostage to the former first.
4) I, like most people on the net, need an editor...
I hope I tagged all of the entries.
Going back several hundred LJ posts, a few things struck me:
1) I'm a really good photographer. Admittedly, I only post a small fraction of the pics I take, and only my favorites of those, so I'm not going to pretend to be objective. Still, going back several years of posts, through lower res cameras and scans, I'm enormously pleased with the body of work presented here. The galleries are a more complete archive, but LJ gets the ones I feel are best at the time. Some tell a story by themselves, many illuminate the entry and a few are just snapshots to record an event. Whee!
2) I'm pretty sure I've now made more LJ entries than I published apazines. Certainly, they're easier to do than mimeo or ditto. No ink, no postage, and able to reach a wide audience within seconds. Still, one of the major positive aspects of sf fandom, to me, is that fans tend to think in paragraphs.
Many people treat LJ entries like irc, with quick comments; sometimes not even complete sentences. This is fine; the web is big enough for all. The trend in social networking is away from longer usenet posts (many of which were pretty quick themselves) and toward smaller and smaller entries. Twitter and Facebook all seem more like texting from a cell phone, since many of the entries are texting from a cell phone. Again, I have no objection to this, but I disparage the lack of developed thoughts in a "you kids get off my lawn" sort of curmudgeonly way.
Not that I haven't made a quick comment or two. But most of my entries are mini-fanzines. At least, I hope they come off that way. I generally don't post unless I have something to say.
The major difference in publishing a fanzine vs. posting to LJ, beside the speed of communication, is, of course, the linking. Hypertext was always the power of the web, adding on to the speed of the net. Simply poking a half a thought onto the web seems regressive.
3) or perhaps 2 1/2) Bruce Schneier has written in the Wall Street Journal on how every electronic conversation is a permanent record and "Ephemeral conversation is dying." He isn't the first to make this point, but I think it's becoming apparent to more and more people, even those who don't use electronics as their major mode of communication. To an extent, I think it's becoming more than that: We're all becoming Isaac Asimov where we record every thought we have. There will be secrets, and people may keep their real thoughts close to the chest ala Shogun, but examples will be fewer and fewer.
Pretty soon, we'll all be in a 1984 dystopia where your private thoughts are known to a few who can manipulate you. Or in a more utopian world where we just accept that random thoughts are not a whole personality. I hope we get to the latter, but I fear we'll be held hostage to the former first.
4) I, like most people on the net, need an editor...
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 12:18 am (UTC)(1) Information volume continues to increase, probably as fast as computing power to winnow & sort, so only the people who care about your thoughts (public or otherwise) will bother getting to know them & you better.
(2) Hypocrisy will, I hope, diminish and go extinct. It's more and more difficult to be one person in public and another in private - ask Ted Haggard how it worked out for him. Soon it may be impossible, which I don't see as a very bad thing. Soon it may be a high compliment to say that someone is "WYSIWYG".
(3) Silence will be more golden than ever, as will zones free of public or electronic surveillance (the home?). Lesson: if what you have to say isn't suitable for the entire world to hear, DON'T SAY IT. Privacy ain't dead, but I expect that it will be very narrowly drawn.
That's not all bad by any means.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 01:48 am (UTC)(2) My fear is the opposite: People will simple start lying earlier, and build a lifetime of lies in public which is contradictory to their private thoughts. Or, perhaps worse, a very strong belief system will be instilled early, and you won't have time to unlearn the bad stuff, and will attract like minded fools. Despite her lies in public, many people like Sarah Palin because "she's one of us".
(3) Probably some form of self-censorship will take hold, but I'm afraid that will merely lead to uptight individuals with a rigid belief system that is hard to change.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 03:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 03:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 03:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 03:44 am (UTC)DisposaBLE yes. Disposed, no.
People may have decreased attention spans as more things come at them faster, but HD space is cheap. And we're at war, doncha know.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 03:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 04:21 am (UTC)We boomers might be the last generation to have an undocumented adolescence.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 07:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 07:47 am (UTC)1. I really love the Hidden Minneapolis series. And I often say the best way to be a good photographer is to take LOTS of pictures and brutally self-edit. I like the Hidden Minneapolis and other stuff you post to LJ over your galleries for that reason... you're showing your best photos here.
2. I think there's wild variation in online communication. Part of it is tied to scope (Twitter vs Usenet, to use your example), but I also think relative anonymity is important. I treat my LJ as semi-anonymous. It's not a secret and I don't hide who I am here, but I don't hand out my LJ freely, either. And it's reflected in content - large parts of my personal life are wide open here, but other parts I don't talk about at all. If it were more anonymous, I might be more open.
Addendum to this: Applicants for jobs in the Obama administration are being asked to submit copies of ALL their internet writings, especially blogging and anything that could be considered political. Lots of people leave a paper trail that could prove embarrassing later.
3. While there is significant electronic residue for everyone these days, there's SO MUCH INFORMATION that it'd have to be specifically sought to make much use of it. There are limits to the practicality of data mining even public stuff on the Internet. Googlestalking is a useful thing to remember, but it's not very deep. And much of it is lost.
I suspect much of the 20th century and the early Information Age will be a Dark Ages in the future, because so little data is preserved. 20th century paper is generally acidic and will rot away, and early electronic communications are in unsupported hardware or software formats. It's gotten better, now that disk is so cheap and data is standardizing on open formats like xml. But heck... I used to write in a long-lost Mac word processor called WriteNow. I don't have any way to open those docs even if I could find them.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-23 09:03 am (UTC)Thanks for the compliments. I'm a photographer from way back, and the digital age gives me the flexibility and darkroom-type control that I've wanted for a loooong time.
Being anonymous (or partly anonymous) was, in many ways, easier when you just sent fanzines through the mail. Bob Tucker used to tell the tale of his first meeting with Lee Hoffman. Lee was a major faned and everyone wanted to meet him. When Bob finally met Lee, he didn't even know it... because Lee is a female.
The internet, and it's grown-up offspring the World Wide Web, are more able to cloak identity than the rigidly controlled networks preceding them. But there's more information, and more clues.
And as mentioned above, people can fly below the radar. Too many don't quite understand modern technology, as B's article talks about. When Dick Chcney lies through his teeth and the Daily Show plays examples of him saying precisely what he's denied saying, Jon Stewart plaintively queries, "don't these people know we have videotape?"
To repeat, we boomers (plus a few years) might be the last undocumented generation. Anyone only a little younger than our president-elect probably used a computer for their college papers, and many were on various social networks as a young teen.
APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 02:28 pm (UTC)I haven't contributed in decades, but it still comes in the mail. That's how hard up they are for contributors.
B
Re: APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 02:30 pm (UTC)B
Re: APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 02:49 pm (UTC)I'm moderately surprised it's still going. Happy that zines are still done in hard copy, but surprised that a college based apa (iirc) has stuck around through the years of student turnover (though that wasn't a requirement for membership, again iirc).
Re: APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 02:51 pm (UTC)B
Re: APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 02:52 pm (UTC)B
Re: APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 03:03 pm (UTC)I'd contribute to the ditto one-shot! I was never in Apa-Q, but I knew lots of the people at the time (and may have seen your first zine) and was in plenty of contemporaneous apas.
Re: APA-Q
Date: 2008-11-23 03:10 pm (UTC)B
First Apazine
Date: 2008-11-23 04:11 pm (UTC)B
Re: First Apazine
Date: 2008-11-23 04:26 pm (UTC)Re: First Apazine
Date: 2008-11-23 04:34 pm (UTC)