Tuesday, November 13, 2012

showing up to a knife with a gun fight.

How can a blog manage the way it's interpreted by the reader?
The reader interacts with this blog in a myriad of ways. Examine, now, all the different aspects of this blog. There are colors. Fonts. Layout. Paragraphs.          Spacing.            Etc. Your eye interprets each of these cues immediately. Subtly.
Then there's the content of what is written. The thought so to speak. But before that, superseding even the thought, is the mere choice of words. Not what is said, even, but how it is said. And before that there are mechanics. Not ideas, not words, but the sheer presentation of sentences. Periods coming here.  Commas here, and all the "rest" of your average fare of grammatical tools. These principles all cohere to form a block of text that is expressive.
First, however, there must exist a predetermined set of mutually agreed upon rules for communication. That is all the mechanical and formal stuff discussed above. However, the issue of pre-existing norms is a little more nuanced than this. Not only does this predetermined set of mechanical rules exist, but socially constructed (we're talking since the dawn of thought, language, writing, etc.) norms of communication. You expect by reading something you'll understand it. You expect to be given the opportunity, by reading something, to align your thoughts with those of an author.
Even if I wrote,
All fire; donkey merry calling blue, said running Colin, "have on!"
Your mind would desperately attempt to find some meaning within that written sentence. Written things are meant to convey meaning! Thought! Because a prerequisite of writing is thought! But what you just read is totally meaningless. If so, then how can you be sure what you're reading right now isn't also completely, and utterly, meaningless!?
Notice how I demonstrated "spacing" above by leaving large spaces on either side of the word.
There is, undoubtedly, intention there. How can you tell? What differentiates an intentional, thought containing sentence from a random assortment of words and mechanics?
What differentiates a written blog from a devised one? Premeditation?
The point is, there are subtleties which the human mind can comprehend. And there is much great thought written (thought?) on the human presentation and comprehension of these subtleties.
These subtleties are known in Academia as cues. There are two types of cues; cues "given" and cues "given off." One is intentional and the other is unintentional, respectively.
Bogs. What cues does this blog give? Give off? How do you know which are given cues and given off cues? Each and every word. Each and every aspect of formatting. Sentence structure. Everything. Each pixel of this blog is constructed. Either consciously in the act. Like riGHt NoW. 
or not. Just a flow of thought, translated/coded into digital text and formatting, following all of the constructed norms and technology that have developed through the ages and are learned throughout our lifetimes. But where does a blog learn such norms? Spelling? Grammar? This is a ? (question mark) and this > is not (a question mark). Symbols denote things, ideas, like questions. Norms and rules facilitate communication.
Cues given and cues given off facilitate interpersonal interactions. We enter social situations, whether online or in face to face interactions, with ideas of how to act. Ideas of our roles. Ideas of which identity we will bring to the interaction. Ideas of what identity the other person will bring to the interaction. In face to face communication and online, as certain scholarship has proved, these socially constructed and agreed upon identities act as a social lubricant.
When you're interacting with a person.
But when you're interacting with a blog. WHa7 5HoUlD Y0U EXPECT>>>>>>>

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

[freewill] Crisis.


You can't develop an identity of your own.
Whatever or whoever you want to be, you can be on the internet. Whoever and whatever you want to be is already out there on the internet. All that exists on the internet is choice. You can't create anything new. You just have to choose. Choose a set of internet 'commodities' such as fonts and photos, amalgamate them, collect them, and arrange them in some perverse regurgitation that shows 'who you are.' Not a copy, but a mere reiteration. You add yourself. But you're not adding an essence of you. No ultimate identity. Not objective identity behind the one that represents 'you' online, or in the world.
Because your identity is always a construction. A reiteration. A collection.
Your entire life before the internet was merely a socialization process to teach you the options. We are part of the same system outside of the internet. We are merely collections of socially constructed identity roles. We are defined by our choices of who and what to be, but our choices our defined by our social environments and immediate contexts. You make the only decision you can under the pre-existing circumstances of any given context. So the choices themselves are not really 'yours.' Free will is, therefore, an illusion. Your identity, therefore, is not you. Your identity is not your creation. There is no you.
The internet exaggerates this.
The reciprocal and social nature of online communities will reinforce the identity of whatever mask you chose to put on. Whatever collection of things you have collected only because you had no other option.
Your online identity is therefore just as authentic as your biophysical identity. They were created through the same processes. Then, where will you draw the line between online you and biophysical you? Is one more legitimate than the other? If you say physical you is more important. You're wrong. Online you doesn't rely physical you. Once you've created your online presence, it's very hard to destroy. It will live online for eternity. While physical you turns into memory and ash. Online you is just as crisp and fresh as the day you created it.
With each new webpage-tab you open in your browser, a new identity is created for you.
Why is the physical world so different? What gives you more agency in your 'real-life?'
How do you know your identity is not created for you by a lifetime of systematic interactions with other people, institutions, and socially constructed norms?
When will your physical reality and the identity linked to it just become another, albeit more ephemeral, window in your browser?
With each new webpage-tab you open in your browser, you create a new identity. You interact with each webpage in a new way, working within a system of norms of interaction. 'You' become only half the equation in the creation of 'your own' identity, the webpage you interact with and the social norms that exist there are responsible for the creation of the other half of YOU. Half is a liberal estimate. There is no ownership. Of anything. This new online identity is not something that has existed before, but is nothing that you alone created. 'You' alone can't own your identity, because it's creation owes itself to so much more than mere YOU. Your choices were not yours to make. Because there is no you, and you couldn't choose anything else other than the choice you chose because you have no agency, because there is no choice, only the illusion of choice, because you were predisposed to make the choice you did because of your history, which is a product of your constructed reality since birth. Because if your reality has set you up all along (your whole life, every context you've ever been in, and all of history before your birth) to choose option A, instead of B or C, then is there really any choice at all?