NetDynam 2.0

after all this time, i’ve just signed up to flickr. so far i am having a lot of fun. hmmm. it is simple and easy to use, and has a lot of features i want to use for organising photos.

this shot was taken as we were speeding back to catch the ferry to return to the mainland on our last day on kangaroo island. i had to hop out of the car and quickly take the shot, so i used the IXUS. it performs OK in most circumstances i think.

it’s one of my favourite shots – mainly because the composition works, and the grass looks good. also, i did not notice those two stones when i took the shot originally, but now i think they make the picture.

i used picasa to gather a few related shots into an ‘album’, and exported the album contents to the desktop so i could easily upload them. the export facility, by default, makes the images smaller, so a lot of the information is lost, but i’ll try out a non-reduced image shortly just to see whether any difference in quality is noticeable.

Wordpress 2.9 has been released; coming to a Netdynam2.0 blog near you.

Of all the phenomena ‘afforded,’ as-it-were, the set that interests me most is how illusions are afforded. There are easy, maybe facile, metaphors come to mind. I can split the focus and wonder about how those illusions may be said to be typically afforded and then move into a more phenomenological frame and wonder what a given typical illusion feels like for the subject. So: when this is pointed out or otherwise amplified for the subject, what does this then evoke in the subject?

I’ll use myself as such a subject. If I ask myself what are the the different types of illusions of privacy afforded differently by email discussion list, and, by group blog, the first images that are aroused differentiate the illusory walled living room of the cozy email list, and, the private hushed conversation conducted in the midst of the uncaring audience.

Let’s leap. This example leads–for me–to the following sense: as a matter of personal preference, I would rather contribute an instance of expression on this blog, have it ignored, yet have it ignored for all the world to see then do the same on an email list and have it echo off the walls. Better the ‘thud’ than the reverberation.

There would be reasons for this.

A better term, coming from wanting to develop a better term, for reflexive affordances is, intraspersonal affordances. It seems to me, even if novel, what I’m trying to locate is the introspective response to the environment. Maybe it’s a sort of bridge or liminal aspect of reflection upon what is afforded. And, what is afforded by the uncertain flux of structure and the interpersonal.

The echoing room refers both to the seeming boundedness of the structure of the list, and, the lack of human reception.

I could run with the room metaphor. To do so is to wonder about what kind of room is a blog. Now my original evoked image shifts. It’s not like creating for all the world to see. All the world can’t fit into its room. It’s a bigger room, and, it’s a bigger illusion of roominess.

Various modalities, and their affordances, look different from one another. For example, Facebook, is like having to occupy a room someone else designed, and, along with this comes lots of constraining rules. Along this same line of thought, as you have noted, the blog modality seems like this too when someone else is busily overhauling the room with their design and with their rules, or some of them.

Obviously this is in high contrast with the austere structure of an email list. With a list, the tools with which one can ‘mark their territory’ are few. But, at the same time, the effects one can create are substantial. In terms of illusion, it would then be the case that a participant might think: “Ahh, this is what is imagined about me.”

Naked text provides for some cruel austerities. Contrast this with the different ways multi-media affords different kinds of mediation. For example, to easily see the artistic product of the photographer is better than even to hop on a text link dangling at the bottom of a post.

Going further, the sensemaking concerned with another person’s embodiment, is enriched via the multi-sensory potential. (Hmmm, methinks the intrapersonal affordances are embodied affordances.) This, then, comes to one of the first winds of the netdynam email list gyre, when psych type and psycho type alike pondered the absence of the body.

Still, I’m mindful of the necessary promotion of illusion. It is possible that illusion is preferable to realism.

I have a favorite example of this. There are immensely popular blogs where a single post evokes tens, hundreds, even thousands of comments. Probably, in a structural sense, a comment threads allows a given comment to ripple downward through successive comments up to the point the comment–in result–dissipates its energy. There, no doubt, are affordances having to do with the dissipative propensities in a modal system. The existence of long comment threads on blogs begs lots of questions. To suggest one answer to an unspecified question: if you read a long comment thread top to bottom, the temporal slices can sometimes be identified because some threads demarcate their own waxing and waning and waxing.

What would a commenter be thinking to lose one’s self in such a trailing crowd?
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1. Blog versus email list discussion

The affordances of the blog medium render discussions conducted there different, both in content and expression, from those previously conducted by the same people via a mailing list.
Reference to content and expression planes is meant to distinguish the meanings made possible by any text, and so we can say that while the expression plane refers to the materiality through which meanings are made (e.g. sound and articulation, movement, gestures, graphology and letters, etc), the content plane refers to meanings derived from the discourse made possible through these media.

In other words, BOTH the formal features of the posts and their responses  – what are labelled ‘comments’ in a blog environment -  are different in every respect when comparing the email-list versus the blog environment: formatting, colour, dispersion on the page, linking/nesting, inclusion of graphics AND  the content of the responses and posts are different. At the same time, what we say and how we say it are affected by our notions of ‘audience’ on the blog. The email list in the case of Netdynam was available by subscription and only subscribers are privy to the posts. The subscription list was small and the active posters became well known to each other. In the case of the blog on the other hand, it is not easily clear who is reading the posts since the web-log is public.

Audience potential appears to be the biggest difference affecting interaction on the blog – as contrasted with the experience of interacting on a mailing list. The technological contraints and enablements notwithstanding, the net effect of the extra appurtances is that blog-members now have open boundaries – or perhaps semi-permeable boundaries if the levels of administration and moderation are taken into account – and this does not make former members of a small list feel as ’secure’ when faced with an open audience. For example, the projected audience affects how a writer addresses the content – this paper was originally written to fellow list-members and instead of third person referents, general nouns, and past tense, I used second person referents, and habitual or present (in the past) tense, i.e. whereas in the paragraph to follow I originally wrote “we have been spending many years defining boundaries…”, for general consumption, I now write something different…

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The home page of Netdynam 2.0 provides a structured guide to the content of the blog. This post is about the links which are part of this structure.

Wordpress, a Content Management System (CMS,) is a kind of crutch. It templates design options having to do with structure. It provides options for implementing structure. Effective usability may or may not follow from various implementations. Also, in a group blog, usability is partly contingent on group members doing their own thing in same ways, same ways that reflect commitment to usability principles.

The structure of the current blog could be annotated to reveal what are its assumptions about structure, and, perhaps, usability. For example, what assumptions drive the vertical order of the sidebar? Implicit in those assumptions could be conceptions about what users might, could, should, do. What are the different goals users bring to the page? What brought them here in the first place? How was Netdynam 2.0 found? Etc.

Links.
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I’m a member of two other mailing lists which both address the same academic topics: SysFunc and SysFling. One is based in Sydney and was conceived of as being a more local venue for announcing Sydney and even Australia-based meetings, conferences, articles and so on, as well as for fielding the usual questions regarding the analysis of curly clauses. The other is based in Europe and is said to be more formal in its approach to similar concerns for systemicists. However, it is probably fair to say that most subscribers belong to both lists, and that most threads if they get going, get CCed to both lists, thus providing for a lot of overlapping.

Occasionally the beginnings of discussions are limited to one list, and then someone posts a CC to the other list as well. Those who are not members of both lists begin to wonder what is going on, but, as I say, these people are in the minority anyway.

After a recent spate of twin list activity, one of the moderators and keepers of one of these two lists, commented that amalgamation might not be a bad idea – especially in view of the fact that he was hoping to retire from list maintenance activities at the end of the year. Thereafter a slew of posts were made approving of the amalgamation – to the extent that a cry went up to the effect that perhaps any further messages on the topic be limited to those who were nay, rather than yea-sayers on the matter. A short period of silence thereafter seemed to suggest that the vote might be carried unanimously until one lone voice spoke up in favour of keeping both lists – aka nay-saying – providing affiliatory and affinity-related reasons for doing so. In other words, he cited boundary issues of the sub-grouping kind, arguing that each list has evolved their own separate identities. Thereafter, another one or two more timid types also ventured to add their nay against the groundswell of yea-sayers – but no doubt to little avail.

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this excerpt from a norwegian comedy show feels very familiar to me… something like my relationship with mike and hoon feels recently wrt the blog operation…..