|
articles
Mike Gunderloy writes
on the virtual geography of surfing.
archives index
Archives by Date
Weblogs
Exhibitionism/Privacy
Web Presence and Self
Submission Details
|
|
cybering.com
is accepting... |
|
essays,
ruminations, confessions, rants, erudite theories, deconstructions, believe-it-or-nots,
hearts-on-sleeve, hauntingly wrought prose, luminous odysseys of personal growth, etc. etc.
|
| on
topics like: |
online communities
(chat,
newsgroups, mailing lists, discussion groups, webrings, gaming)
--
how they form, how they change.
online
relationships (of any type).
you
and your computer.
subcultures:
of expertise, of interest, of gender, of orientation.
surfing,
web presence,
alter
personae,
privacy,
exhibitionism (journals and webcams), lurking.
how
being online has changed your real life.
how
being online has obviated your real life.
We
will accept original material, links to good pages on these topics, or
permission to use your material from your
own site on these topics.
|
|
| |
|
cybering
Thursday, June 29, 2000
Hi, I'm a new contributor to Cybering. You, too, can post to this fine blog or contribute an article. Contact artnixie@aol.com. And now....
I was talking with a friend of mine, who is 36, about her experience with computers. She said that until a couple of years ago, she had never really seriously considered even buying a computer. She's now learning HTML and web design but remarks upon the fact that younger people all seem to know a huge amount about all this stuff, they seem to have gotten it with their Cheerios every morning when they were growing up.
I am only two years younger than she, 34, but I've been playing with computers since I was in elementary school. Although I can't say all my peers are completely computer literate, a large number are, and many of my friends my age are in the industry. I have noticed this sort of sharp dividing line that seems to hit right around my age; there seems to be a strange sort of computer generation gap that opened up for kids born in the mid-sixties. I notice that people just one or two years older than me often seem to live in a quite different world from those my age or younger. Many kids I knew had computers; Apple IIs or Commodore 64s or a bit earlier, Commodore PETs and TRS-80s. When I was a freshman in college, the first Macintosh came out. By the time I was a senior many if not most people wrote their papers on word processors; and after I graduated, a lot of them got computer jobs (easier and higher paying than the traditional temporary jobs for people with liberal arts degrees; i.e., becoming a waiter or a cook).
I heard of a computer department whose entire curriculum was steeped in COBOL just the year before I went to college, but they switched to PCs and minicomputers just as I was entering school. The COBOL people are out of luck today, but those trained in my generation seem to be managing fine. When Douglas Coupland wrote
Generation X he was talking about the group born starting around 1960, but these days the term seems to be used more for people born in 1965 and later --- exactly the year I was born and now the origin of the time-shifted "GenX" moniker. But this also seems to roughly correspond with the digital generation; the first set of kids to grow up with computers, to take them for granted, to be easily conversant with them and fluent in their use.
Computer use has now become quite trans-generational but there still remains a big difference between those who have had them in their lives since they were children and those who discovered them suddenly in their adult lives. In the latter case it is a mother tongue, in the former, a foreign language, awkward and somewhat daunting. However, this language is nevertheless spoken by a majority in every age group in this country now, whether foreign or not; acceptance has reached cross-generational critical mass.
posted by mitsu
Tuesday, June 27, 2000
6/16
from: support at ------host.com
to: artnixie
I'm afraid I have some bad news.
Our new provider (the 'landlord' where our server are housed) have some very strict rules about what is and what is not considered 'adult content'. While I fought valiantly, the decision was reached that cybering.com falls under this description, and cannot be housed on our dedicated servers. Part of the reasoning (although not all) is because your site contains some 'questionable' links - for example, to 'jennicam' (again, not in our opinion, but that of the Network operations people from whom we lease the servers).
6/25
to: ----- host.com
from: artnixie
Strange to be considered an adult content site.
Jennicam is not a porn site. It's one of the first and most successful of the journal/ webcam personal sites. I think members (who pay) get more frequent cam refreshes. She has some arty nude photos up, all taken as publicity shots for magazines after she got famous from the site.
6/26
from: --------host.com
to: artnixie
As I mentioned in my last message, our definition of 'adult content' differs
in some respects from the owners of the Network Operations Center we run our
servers on. Since they provide the space and bandwidth to host the servers,
we are bound by their definition of 'adult'. Yes, it will be somewhat
inconvenient to split providers, but we have a handful of sites that fit
this gray area where we still need to provide hosting, so we will keep them
where they are.
And most anyone would agree that Jennicam is definitely an adult site.
There is plenty of nudity there, and all of it is freely available as a
visitor to the site without any age verification (talking about the gallery
archive shots, there are many that could be considered provocative or
'adult'). Whether or not we would consider it taboo is moot since our
provider does and they hold the ultimate decision over what they will allow
to be broadcast over their network. If we considered you to be in violation
of -------host's content policy we would never have signed you up! 8-)
I'm sorry we couldn't move you to the new servers, but rest assured we will
continue to support your site and your growth with us.
posted by nixie
Sunday, June 25, 2000
I like this discussion.. the way the titles mutate, the dialogue and sprawl.Cyber Cypher Cider
Thinking about bad websites and bad chat, like bad wine or food or books, that can poison your dreams and infiltrate your inner balance.
Meta-warning. Soon I will need to archive the earlier entries; they remain up because they include the entreaties and cajolings to prospective writers. At that point, I'll probably have to add a search tool to the site. And I'm beginning to wonder whether a discussion option might coax you strongly opinionated yet curiously reticent folk to speak out.
Meanwhile, awaiting like a professionally expectant and enchanted child in a Dunkin Donuts Christmas morning commercial, the torrents of prose sure to deluge my inbox. (complex neo-noir image in grainy black and white of the virtual flood 2000.)
posted by nixie
Friday, June 23, 2000
Two weeks away from my computer. I had planned to update as I traveled, but I came up against a few walls. The first was the reality that people for whom 'the internet' means email have cumbersomely configured connections. my main access involved running a long phone cord to an outside cottage in order to connect, and since my host was often making or waiting for calls, and since the cord needed to exit a usually locked window and enter an always locked door, it seemed better to accept that other places are truly other and take a break from surfing, checking stats, and all the other compulsive habits of running a site.
I also noticed that even the most sporadic computer users are proprietary about their machines. I was nominally offered use of two systems, both of whose owners then repeatedly 'forgot' to give me their access passwords. One woman, only reachable by voicemail phonetag, had floods of worries about me deleting her mail or files. I understand now why people get laptops. I also missed my home computer; the way my files are organized, my lovely bookmarks.
I'd signed up for Deepleap, the most trendy of the your-bookmarks-and-notes-to-self-accessible-from-anywhere sites, right when it came out. But reconstructing that stuff for yet another format daunted me. Even if I'd had Deepleap full of juicy info, however, my friend's frequently-disconnecting netscape on Mac (configured with teensy font,) made surfing in multiple windows and posting a royal pain.
I arrived back home to find out that Cybering had been censored. Yes, my provider had moved to a new server, offering more space for the money and various extra features. I had copied the site to the new ISP, proud of my FTP-savvy, checked all the links, and notified them it was ok to activate the new site. The email informed me that the new server has stringent prohibitions on 'adult content' and Cybering is unacceptable for them to host. Singled out was a link to 'jennicam' within an entry about exhibitionism versus safety.
Jennicam is far from the most salacious site I've mentioned, but the conflation of metadiscussion of adult content with porn itself on the part of the server baffles me. Are we just to ignore a large part of life online in favor of a sort of sanitized high road by example?
posted by nixie
Saturday, June 03, 2000
Out getting coffee on Tuesday and bypassed the Times in favor of the Daily News whose cover screamed "Cybersex Addicts: Why 2 million Americans are hooked on Web sex". The two page spread eschewed 'why' in favor of slight titillation crossed with therapist-endorsed disapproval. Pearls of wisdom? Women look for Tom Hanks, but meet perverts and wreck their families. 'Kris', the prototype addict is quoted: "The paranoia goes through the roof because you're lying. You're lying to people and lying to yourself. You're hiding emails, encrypting files, hoping no one comes near your computer because it's a secret life." Kris, a mother and professional "turned to x-rated chatrooms and found herself alternately thrilled and ashamed, spending four hours at a time at the computer and then tortured by 'the madness'".. she says "The shame and the humiliation is horrible and the despair gets too deep. And the depression". The companion 'news' article states "addiction to cybersex is a debilitating obsession that has corroded mariages, wrecked careers, and left its victims isolated and ashamed." The article cites recent tv shows dealing with this as an 'indication of its prevelence' and quotes a lot of cottage-industry therapists on escapism, isolation, and fantasy. Um.. so why, again?
From the Pure Intimacy website: "Back in 1989, I interviewed convicted serial killer Ted Bundy on the eve of his execution in Florida. He shared with me how pornography pulled him out of a normal lifestyle and into a world of addiction and violence. Although many people are able to view pornography without following Bundy's murderous path, few are able to escape the mental and emotional scars that change their view of sexuality and jeopardize their ability to have normal relationships." The online sex addiction questionnaire. The cybersex addiction checklist.
Is cybersex cheating discussion board. Some sad stories. Cyberconfessions with commentary.. True stories.
From Mouth Organ, two contradictory Salon articles on hackers/ geeks and sex. They don't have any. They are having a lot.
A different sort of net abuse. (Spamming newsgroups FAQ). A different take on addiction.
Meanwhile, via Swallowing Tacks, a sketchbook of discussion-group types. And, from A List Apart, the Dao of Design.. or.. why this ezine about the web is not 'of' the web, but a vestige of an older (print) media, ineptly translated.
Not enough cyberculture reading here? Tech mailings profiles 143 mailing lists on cyberculture to join.
posted by nixie
Thursday, June 01, 2000
Media Convergence... the New York Times Magazine had a nice article 2 weeks ago called 'The Electronic Fishbowl'(you have to login the Times site and then search.. quite simple and worth it). It made some nice points about celebrity, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and the quest for the 'real' or 'authentic' within the artificial confines of 'reality' tv shows and webcam sites. I have this theory that there's an age thing happening, where younger people who have had their every important moment videotaped are much more able to disregard being observed, and thus behave 'naturally' (although 'natural' itself has changed). I wonder if this is reflected in photographs as well -- have candid snaps become even more candid; are people able now to completely inhibit the reflex to pose?
When I first got my computer, I thought about using a webcam to create live performances, perhaps interactive. This idea is now quite dated, as every webcam broadcast is a performance, and to some degree interactive. I've noticed that my writing responds to a perceived 'audience', and even if you don't perform stripteases for your regular viewers, you notice what they come back for, you maybe try to be a bit more interesting than you'd be unobserved.
I wonder if voyeurism and authenticity will circle back on computer use itself. Sure, I could watch someone watch tv on their webcam, but I'd really love a peek at their harddrive and email. I'd like to watch a real-time scroll of their cybersex while I also watched their reactions.
Imagining the limits of a totally documented and observed life.. say every one of their personal papers were scanned in, every one of their possessions had a picture and description; a list of their caloric intake was posted... It's a bit like a lab animal -- standing in for 'everydog' but in no way getting to be a dog. But it also shows the limits of empirical knowledge. The more data there is, the more life seems transparant and all brought to the surface, the more elusive the inner gestalt.
This is reminding me of why I had to stop taking acting lessons. The exercises were improvisational, combining increasingly complex emotional conditions with 'normal' activities. In my quest for 'normal activities', I began spectating on my own life to such a degree, that nothing I did felt authentic anymore. I was always evaluating it for its success as a 'real' moment for an acting exercise. The webcam was in my head, and I needed some time off to see what I was actually feeling. Have the webcam broadcasters found the elusive holy grail of acting? To be completely spontaneous and unaffected while observed? Or has being observed become so ubiquitous that everyone is secretly now living at a deeper level of privacy while 'putting on a good show'?
posted by nixie
|