[NetBehaviour] Communication in Online Communities

[Johannes Birringer]

I understand well and am in support of everything Alan has just written
and said about Netbehavior, I hope this list continues and grows as
it must have over the past.  (And apologies for my 'stone fence' post
the other day as it must have been a distraction, but I had meant
to respond to something that John had written).

regards
Johannes Birringer


________________________________________
From: netbehaviour-bounces at netbehaviour.org [netbehaviour-bounces at netbehaviour.org] on behalf of Alan Sondheim [sondheim at panix.com]
Sent: Monday, October 05, 2015 3:05 PM

Netbehaviour has been one of my mainstays for discovering new work, new
artists, new ideas; the urls serve me and I can easily follow through from
them. And I can't imagine having even this discussion, say, on Wordpress
or Fb; one of the advantages of email is that it arrives without its own
platform, or with minimalized platforms or with self-designed platforms;
it's as close to discussion we can have if we include, obviously,
buffering and communality (Skype isn't good at either for example). Fb
discussions trail out and disperse as well; G+ was, if I remember
correctly, supposed to be a discussion platform, but again that seemed to
collapse, just as newsgroups did. To bring an antique acronym back for a
second, email is wysiwyg; it's platform independent. I'd say a potentially
simple solution would be to have a Furtherfield studio for open
presentations, projects, etc., running on a separate server. As far as
changing the demographics of the list - that's another problem and an
important one, and it seems to me that people who are teaching in
university or say k 9-12 (in the U.S.) might be able to bring students in;
I used to do that with other lists when I had a position. For myself, I
find a kind of skittering underlying the discussion and I worry about
that; philosophy, new media aesthetics, etc., are difficult topics, there
are a lot of exploratory/explanatory sites out there, and the value of
this list, like empyre, is that it creates a focus; I take what I learn
here and it becomes part of my day in a way that Fb posts don't, Wired.com
doesn't, etc. The commons like the stoa are a place of discussion and
hopefully a kind of quietude that provides the grounds for discussion - as
an example, I learned far more about anguish on the extended presentations
on empyre (when Johannes and I co-moderated a discussion on absolute
terror, ISIS, and performance), than I did on all the fast-forward and
intermittent talk/presentations elsewhere. I was able to follow through
with the buffering, url extensions, and even chat/skype that came out of
it. I'm on Fb, blogs, G+, news, etc. daily, but here I can contemplate in
an entirely different way, one close, in fact, to nature, to what's left
of the natural environment (and there are a number of studies indicating
that such is good for your health, not only mentally, but also physically)
- so I would argue that we keep this core as it is, extend the demography,
as much as possible, and build elsewhere. (As a final note, I tend to read
most of my email in a linux terminal; the advantage is even less graphics,
no advertising, and a kind of textual presentation that approaches
Vygotsky's inner speech. I remember more, think more, etc., but of course
this isn't for everyone and I use gmail, Fb messaging as well.) - Alan,
thanks for a great discussion -

On Mon, 5 Oct 2015, Randall Packer wrote:

> I want to express a note of thanks to all those who have been participating
> in this interesting conversation. I have also adjusted the topic because we
> abandoned Geert?s interview long ago.
>
> I think this is a fascinating and relevant discussion for NetBehaviour and I
> too hope it will lead to a more focused discussion that could potentially
> lead to action. But in the meantime, it is an important conversation,
> because there are many here and elsewhere who are grappling with information
> flows among online communities: grappling with the conservation of
> knowledge,