Tuesday, July 27, 2004
(9:30 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
So about this community thing
Toward the end of Monica's recent post, she quoted a manifesto from the group Lumpen that stated that "…the cultural workers, dissidents, designers, provocateurs, musicians, artists, and activists who are navigating and exploring spaces to liberate ourselves from the safety of regularity and the detachment of the everyday… are creating worlds for us to explore" and further that "A series of movements are being built that are yearning for connection around the country. We see threads of a different world being woven into a direction that is taking us out of the morass of mediocrity and inaction and captivity…." She connected this to our own blogging related program activities:I believe in blogging as a means for connecting and meeting each other, and as a partial answer to the US’s sore want for public discourse. The blog is a semi-public forum, sure, but as blogger Kotsko has learned, we have a way of being found. Also, I don’t care that, when blogging, we’re communicating with each other from behind our screens. I feel a definite sense of emotional connection with bloggers and comment-posters. Furthermore, the blogging format is commendable as a way for introverts to exert their influence in a culture where extroverts dominate political and social life. At the blog, introverts may safely type away, with time to reflect and compose coherent statements, and unflustered by demands for off-the-cuff responses.I think this is something we might discuss. She is currently busy riding her bike across Iowa and will be unable to join directly, but I wonder what we think: Is she right? Are we actually building community here? Is it in any sense "liberating"? Does blogging technology provide a potential toe-hold for the perpetuation of the participatory democratic ideal? Does blogging represent expanded access to the means of cultural production, or does it just produce a cacaphony of conflicting views? Is it time to stop denigrating the figure of the introverted computer nerd who sits at her computer instead of participating in the "real world"?
I don’t know how long the phenomenon of blogging will last, or how it may evolve, but I’m glad it’s here. I am grateful to you blog posters and commenters who deal with important, difficult, and surprising things.
I think what we are doing here is good. I may even call it “liberating.”
