The Digital Writer |
Context is a key item in the era of excess. If you're on a medium, like TV, where pro wrestling and Gilligan's Island is a channel away, it's hard to be taken seriously as a political commentator trading bits of nonsense with another commentator who understands the context perfectly and smiles all the way to the bank. But, what if the context is everything?
It is the context of everything, unlike TV that is absolutely limited by the expense of putting things on the air or newspapers and magazines that have limited ad space. And we still believe that the print context is a very important one that can lend dignity to thought and creativity. Of course, print has its equivalents of Gilligan's Island and pays many of its bills through it.
The Net, however, is still a context in creation. It's much more appropriate to think of channels. We are loyal to the writing arts and to thoughtful thoughts and good humor so that is what the channel is built around. The purpose of links is to give each dedicated digital writer the ability to craft a channel as assuredly as he would craft a story; by including and excluding. A link, then, is a serious matter just as the single brush stroke is a serious matter if you are trying to execute something rare. Thankfully we aren't alone.
The emphasis on money in the early phase of the Net was understandable but ill-advised. And now that Salon looks like it's had it, one can say that a whole phase of Net development has taken place.
The bloggers I read tire very quickly. It's because, essentially, they have nothing new to say. It's the same cynical nonsense they wrote in college while smoking pot. I sense some youthful glee in the destructive furies as one generation begins to make inroads against another. They too will learn their lessons and become subdued as a result. But, some of the fury can be entertaining.
Journalists are like professors; they don't understand that their credibility is measured by the institutions they represent. If education is not teaching people how to read and write, then what possible thing can a professor say? And if journalists get narcissistic and vainglorious during a scandalous period of time, what can one say? They missed the boat and will be lessons for the future that will have to suffer the fact that the scandals have ended a cycle of American growth.
A debate over the future of newspapers
I wouldn't give these bloggers any money until they figure out they are adults now and that Professor X no longer has a thumb on them and Editor Y has long gone from the scene.
The best bloggers are Herb Caen types who take on the cultural landscape rather than one particular city as their habitat. Unfortunately, the cultural landscape is so boring, so inept, so made over in cynicism and fast-bucks, that the reasonable person goes elsewhere. One of these days the media may find itself in a free fall as the consumer decides to live a life without it.
I go back to the wonderful essay by Carla Hess and her phrase, "the remaking of the literary system." She compared the Net to the French revolution and the passionate glee that the revolutionaries had in destroying the privilege of writing and publishing. It was a central tenet of the revolution. But then, it began to produce absolute nonsense in its wake. After awhile the mind shrugs its shoulders. Well, so what? You have pulled down the mechanisms, now what? Of, I see, you will die in your own piss and vomit. Yes, that will be your last act of liberation. Your useless words will roll along the ground with the blood of headless aristocrats. I see.
When I started writing I quickly learned that books are not writing. Books contain written material. Writing can occur anywhere there is imagination and a primitive tool. The container, book, is very useful and has overcome many obstacles. But, it has also created obstacles by its very success. The success of book publishing has created a gargantuan system that is very inefficient and depends on calculated and manipulated "buzz," to move books. "Buzz" wins and quality loses. It is a zero-sum game and to see how dumbed down a "buzzed" culture is is to appreciate the stakes in the game. Americans, especially, are lambs led to slaughter by the devilish designs on them by those who wish to create "buzz." Of course, a lamb is a lamb is a lamb. If there is anything approaching a cultural war it is between those who hunt for quality and those who are passive victims to "buzz."
I always wanted to write but I hesitated before the gates of Hell that the publishing system appeared to be.
Economics and the habits of new generations will determine the nature of the new publishing worlds. We get to choose. We get to play. We get to create interesting hybrids from print and digital.
There's a huge irony at work, of course. When digital publishing becomes mainstream, when it becomes successful, it will simply replicate some of the worst tendencies of the print publishing world. No. What we are looking at now is a small window for the release of creative energy, into a medium not yet made, not yet successful and full of hope, full of expectation. That is our premise. We work in a narrow window and will see it close one day.
One day the digital publishing universe will have many gatekeepers, agents, distribution schemes, moneyed types, fawning professors, auditors, and so on. Until that enviable time, it remains a vast plain of spirit; a vast burning desert of warriors and their wild women.
One place newspapers are booming is in servicing the ethnic communities.
An good report on what media news sites are making online.
Seth Godin talks about the death of media monopoly
Writing, now, is either an act of meaning or a puff of air.
The entertainment of the people has been taken over by the visual
arts. In my early days as a writer, the first ten years, as a matter
of fact, I felt writing to be a path of meaning, a way to connect
outside the systems and common frameworks , and con games that describe
modern life. Any seriousness that I picked up comes out of
the struggle to maintain a path of meaning with the fiery red eye of
modern society saluting me like a devil awaiting its first victim
to Hell. Spiritual wisdom played a role, great constructive
principles, thoughts elevated out of the muck and mire, heroic
people, were among the items I tried to connect with.
One connects to make their own, then releases and lets go.
Now, as I enter middle-age, I don't know; I'm not quite sure.
The Net as both a private and public space has humbled me and
shown me a great deal. I still believe it's the best space to
construct meaningful writing. If the masses click elsewhere,
so what? Were they going to pick up the slim volume of writing
at Powell's? I don't think so.
The manipulators dominate the Net now. I don't think they have
the power to fully mangle the genius of this medium but I
wouldn't put it past them. In every nook and cranny I look there are
excellent things being done and excellent writing taking place.
As I've said over and over again, the Net will have to wait until
there is a critical mass of habit breaking before it begins to make
great inroads to the establishment. And then it will become the
establishment; the books will be written and a generation down
the road will rebel at having to be forced to go up on the Net
and click to all the required places.
Still, for us the living, the cultural space being created is rather
extraordinary and gives confidence that one can attempt anything;
that the building is endless and yet fully human and meaningful.
If we assume the off-line real world to be something and to have
certain values, as well as limitations, then what can we express on
the Net that extends the nature of that reality into spaces that it
can't afford itself? Rather than insiderism,
cynicism, con, one would think that would require the highest nature
possible to understand both the real world and its further extension.
To put the digital next to the print is to put the new car
against the horse around the late 1890's. It took a while for the
car to win in the market; it ran into all kinds of obstacles.
Once it became economically feasible it succeeded wildly
throughout the 20th century. It's true that the digital
publishing system will become as orientated to the bottom-line
as the print counterpart. But there is a window of opportunity
for every type of writer until that day happens. The literary
writer, especially, has an open field to play in, in a publishing
system that doesn't punish him for having literary values rather
than the dumbed-down market values. The window will close no
doubt but until it does the literary writer has to take full
advantage of the opportunity.
Any publishing system is simply the means to connect the writer
with the reader. The Net is as legitimate as slick paper or heavy
stock paper. It is a medium. And we know the enormous
struggles taking place today between peer to peer systems and
more formal, structured corporate systems. We favor peer to peer.
Our quick calculations, faulty at best, tells us that we have
two decades before anything resembling a formal publishing system
on the Net becomes the only way publishing will get done.
The Wall Street Journal ran a comprehensive section on
the Net with one article drawing parallels between the Net
and other dynamic inventions, including the printing press.
The author failed to mention that the key to the Net is
how it forces the person to have a formal structure for receiving,
assimilating, and making sense of a enormous array of cross-
currents. We know that the inflation of knowledge will create
as much havoc as opportunity. There is apt to be as much superstition as
enlightenment when people are suddenly thrust into an environment
that overflows with information, stimulus, and contentious ideas.
The flow of information will tend to get organized through very
basic, emotional categories whether based in politics or religion
and projected outward as a defense against the onslaught.
Culture could deal with this by lengthening the time of
learning and dependency in the young and lengthening out the
time for productivity that, apparently, will now extend into
a person's 70's. The choice is between knowledge, wisdom
and propaganda. If a liberal, democratic culture wants to survive
it will go to due process, knowledge, even wisdom but it is
inundated with the practices of propaganda.
The long forms of writing can be used as a kind of demonstration
of this process. The short forms of writing can battle propaganda.
The literary writer, free of the market and free of academia,
has to take the lead in this new environment.
David