*Bump*
Given Woebot's
recent ruminations on this interview and the new ones from
Ballardian and
Socialist Worker, i thought perhps it was time to resurrect this thread. I remember being surprised at the time that there was so little reaction to it and then promptly forgot it existed. Now that it has surfaced again, with additions, I have a couple of thoughts.
Regarding the lack of inter-blog discourse, Woebot's right on the money. This forum has all but eliminated the need for the hourly blog checks I used to make. Instead, I come here to read or post. If I did post responses to blog posts on my lonely little corner of blogspot, would anybody read it? Certainly it is unlikely to get noticed by the heavy-hitters like blissblogger and Woebot. Frankly, I see Dissensus as a positive step away from the insular discussions that used to take place between those early adopters. I enjoyed reading them, but with everybody closing their comment boxes I had no real opportunity to respond. Perhaps that's the way the early blogosphere group it. Despite Simon's lack of enthusiasm, I think this is much better.
Regarding the internet having "extinguished the idea of the true underground," I don't buy that at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. Simon is right, of course, that the internet has opened up new ideas to each and every one of us. What's missing from that statement, however, is that in order for exposure to occur, first one must locate the idea/art/music. I tend to think of the internet as a garbage dump; a fetid sea of garbled OMG! ROTFLMAO! and pornography. Rising out of the ocean are odd islands of novelty and passion, which from time to time collect into an archipelago of original ideas/art/music. Myspace was, as Woebot points out, just such a grouping. That is until it became so bloated with crap as to collapse back into the Sargasso under its own weight. Simon states (or at least seems to) that it is easier to find novelty using the internet, thereby precluding the existence of a "true" underground. I would argue that only the truly devoted can and do navigate the ex[in]cremental currents of the web to locate that which we seek. Granted, I might never have discovered grime or dubstep without Dissensus, but I would never have discovered Dissensus without first reading Energy Flash. EF lead me to blissout, which lead me to blissblog, which lead me to Woebot and k-punk and heronbone and sherburne and a myriad of others. I searched, I scoured, I discarded, I discovered. How many of the internet using public are so dedicated?
I would also point to the example of Facebook. For the uninitiated, Facebook is like Myspace without the tunes (although that may be coming soon). One can set up groups and events, post pictures, send both public (via a comments wall) and private (via an email-ish interface) messages and eventually amass a staggering group of all the people you have ever met in you lifetime. When one joins, one is asked to join a "Network". Said Network is along geographic lines. I, for example, am in the Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada group. As a member of said Network, I am free to peruse the profiles of most of the other members of my Network. Sure there are privacy functions, and one can readily block everyone but friends from seeing one's details, but the whole thing is along local rather than international lines. The same can be said of events. If one wants to see all of the local party events occurring on a given weekend, it is a question of clicking the mouse. I know, because that is exactly what I did when I first moved here six months ago. I quickly found a group of like-minded electronic music enthusiasts and have my first gig at one of their parties next weekend. Would I have found this group of people without Facebook? Perhaps eventually. The fact that I did so very quickly and that the group is small relative to the local population and is still managing to keep a regular party schedule says to me that internet users are shying away from the global and focusing inward at the local. In my estimation, the increasing popularity of utilities like Facebook is more likely to grow local scenes than break global ones.
Right, that’s killed most of the afternoon. Anyone else?