The Internet accelerates serendipity. So says my good friend and colleague Diana Kimball. The more I write and think about the Internet, the more I believe her idea to be true.

Twitter has exploded in the past year, and come along way since its introduction in 2006, its incipient user base of post-2007 SXSW, and its world-wide popularity come late 2008 (after Twitter was picked up by the mainstream media). But allthough Wikipedia pegs Twitter as “a social networking and micro-blogging service,” in reality it’s a mode and new form of communication.

Twitter basically allows a user to post a message in 140 characters or less (to accommodate for the length of modern SMS text messaging formats, which limits a one-page message to 160 characters). When a message is tweeted, it appears next to the user’s Twitter handle.

If the TEDtalk video embedded above, one of the founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, says that he and his team expected out of Twitter only as much as has been explained. However, because of the people using the service, and hence the human need for communication in general, Twitter evolved much more. Eventually, the @ sign became a standard element to Twitter, allowing users to direct messages at certain people and for those messages to appear on the intended user’s Twitter stream. The @username trend eventually became integrated into Twitter as a hyperlink system, allowing random users to click on the @username to discover a new persona altogether. In addition to the @username linked in the message, underneath the tweet appears a message that says “in reply to (username),” which links to a separate page containing the replied-to message. Eventually, too, users introduced the #hashtag trend to Twitter, contextualizing messages that included the short (or sometimes long) tag in a foreign conversation that could only be understood with a #hashtag aggreator. Williams seems to remark that conversations beyond dialogues between two people were not inherent to the nature of Twitter, even though in time they appeared.

Before continuing, I will explain what I mean by “narrative of rhetoric.” In conversation we use rhetoric, to persuade or impress the addressee. The nature of conversations, or arguments, debates, etc. flows in a temporal fashion, with sentences building on previous statements to reach a conclusion. Point 1 moves to Point Two which results in Point 3. An ordinary narrative of rhetoric, then, is forward. A five-paragraph essay, for example, begins with an introduction, makes three points to illustrate the introduction’s thesis, and then ends with a conclusion that wraps up the points and reiterates the thesis. The narrative moves forward, like a bedtime story for children.

With Twitter, the narrative of rhetoric is not forward; instead, it is backward. Because of the nature of the Internet — in that we view media online after it has been produced, unlike a conversation, when the media is produced in real time — the narrative flows (and must flow) in reverse.

This is how it works:
1) User views a comment on Twitter that is “in reply to (username).”
2) Clicking on “in reply to,” Twitter brings the user to the previous message, which also contains a “in reply to (username)” tag.
3) The user clicks on “in reply to,” to be brought to another page with the message in sequence before the previous one.
4) And on, and on, and on…

Basically, on Twitter, argument and conversation flows backwards. It’s as if we were to read an essay backwards, which doesn’t make sense, but brings an entirely new and unperceived perspective to the table. We read the last statement instead of the first, and we gain the opportunity to see not where an idea or daydream or poem is going but from whence it came. We are able to ask, “Why would somebody say that?,” and yet instead of fabricating an answer to this musing we are provided the context of the comment. Welcome to history, in reverse.

A similar motion of rhetoric exists, but while the first movement relies on the @user tag, the second relies on the #hashtag. In the imaginary space creating through aggregation services like Twitter Search that compile all the messages relating to one #hashtag, a conversation is let to exist. However, if you are a friend of someone using a #hashtag, the message seems random and arbitrary and without context. As with the @username tag, the #hashtag provides the discovery of a conversation in media res. A user’s Twitter stream could become full of a stream of contextless messages, all having been intended for (imaginary space) conversations.

The difference between the #hashtag narrative of rhetoric and the @username narrative is that the story continues to be told. With the @username tag, if the conversation between two users is continued, the onlooker cannot continue viewing it, unless he finds a future message in the chain and traces its context back to the original conversation. However, with the #hashtag, context is continually accessible, with a mere refresh of the #hashtag aggregation page.

The implications of the reverse or in media res forms of rhetorical narrative on Twitter are interesting to observe. For example, the intended use of the RT tag (or “retweet” tag, which is utilized when a user wants to repeat or reiterate a comment made by another individual) can be hacked. The RT tag does not supply context for a comment, but does draw attention to a message. Adding RT to another user’s tweet means that somebody found that message worthy of recognition. RT symbolizes value. However, we can imagine a scenario when a user fabricates the comment of an individual and then retweets it. Because the RT tag is contextless, the user quoted does not need to have submitted the comment. For instance, I could retweet a fake comment made by my friend that says he hates chocolate ice cream, after having just consumed some at a local shop and texted his opinion to Twitter. The users following my account but not my friends see no context for the fake comment, only assuming that my friend did indeed send the message (because his tweets don’t show up in their Twitter stream). Perhaps fellow chocolate-ice-cream lovers would look down upon my friend after seeing my fake retweet — a negative implication. The hacking of RT can benefit a situation as well, such as retweeting a shout-out about a great blog post that my friend just published. Although viewers would be confused upon not finding the post, their visits would increase traffic on his website.

This look at hackability of comments has already been tackled by the American law system, through libel and slander. But when it is positive, it can have profound effects. A recent case in point was an observation at a hack-a-thon I participated in about a month ago at Harvard. In twenty-four hours, a group of my friends created a service called YawnLog, where users can track their sleep debt (or surplus). Jason Scott, a good friends of many of the YawnLog team, tweeted via @Sockington about our service, and our user base jumped a couple hundred in the span of about an hour.

This situation provides a novel attitude toward the concept of Internet celebrity. The hackability of rhetorical narrative on Twitter provides opportunity both for Internet fame and fame for others through the Internet famous. All of this relies, of course, on serendipity. Serendipity means the occurrence of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Even before the introduction of the Google search bar to web browsers, the Internet has been about serendipity, about finding new and interesting things online. The novelty of the Internet has awoken a new culture, which has pervaded computer screens, handhelds, and even streets of the real world. And serendipity appears to have propelled ordinary people into stardom online, pushing identities into the realm of the Internet celebrity. Twitter, of course, is one more service, based in everyday communication, that accelerates the chance that we’ll come across something intriguing on the Web. The random potential of the Twitter stream pours a lot of useless information into our laptops and cell phones and web browsers, but it is amazing still how every once in a while a few words will inspire us to click on a link or follow an individual without expectations.

In some ways, I feel like I’ve conformed to another hipster precedent that I’ve been resisting for too long. And yet even though I’ve finally caved in, I still reckon that I’ve stumbled into a secret cavern lit by candlestick glow. Like an dusty, Victorian house, but one quainter than those along Brattle St.

Anyway, check it out: geno.tumblr.com. The first post goes, of course, to Diana Kimball and her most recent essay, “In the Absence of Fiction,” which put me in such a mood today that I need to write about it soon (possibly tomorrow, secretively, during work). I blame her for getting me started on this compositional adventure. So inspirational, in fact, that she’s unintentionally getting her name out there: “Her writing is passionate, idealistic, reflective, personal and fantastically geeky.”.

In the creation of my new Tumblr, though, I had to come face to face with a situation floating around the skull as of late. Looking to Tim’s predictions, he hovers over the point of ever-increasing movement toward absolute identification (“information consolidation”). Compared to my early days on the Internet, when I engaged with the parental caveats toward personal concealment (even though my first username, Owl6887, clearly emblazoned my date of birth, like every friend at the time), my current Facebook profile prominently displays a full range of contact info and idiosyncratic characteristics. My resume sits on LinkedIn; my website URL remains a monikerized placeholder. I’m certainly not branding myself, but IRL Alex is approaching pure digital socialization. I look back at old usernames in awe of my referential mindset. CollegeBoard still waves _ (a misnomer of the treasure-hunting character, Graham _, from the SNES version of Tales of Phantasia) at me before I can access my financial PROFILE. All those old AIM screen names haunt the occasional memory.

My FC friends still try to retain that creative spark. Sleuth. Diana. Chrysaora. Christina. I could list more if I had an excuse to stay up later, but I’m already tired. But I’ve returned to the username graveyard to lay bouquets on the oldies and picked up Geno at the social security office. It’s homage to my nickname of four years from high school, Gino, but influenced by the fact that the name was taken already. Now, it’s a double salute, the secondary toward this guy from another RPG.

Look for the quotes.

When I was younger, I liked to brag a lot, until one day I realized I was gradually turning into “that kid,” which propelled me into a slow process of self-exoneration and forced-realization of the humble. But I’ll take a moment to plug two upcoming talks that I’m hosting at Connecticon in Hartford, CT, from 1-3 August, entitled “R-R-Remix! The Mashed Up Culture of Anime Fandom” and “State of the Otaku 2008.” I mention these because I have been reading through a book by one of my favorite beach-babe-turned-Harvard-professors, Chris Kelty, called Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, for a Harvard Free Culture mini-group project, which will henceforth be known as 2B2P for short, or the Two Bits Processor Project for long. This post will be a reaction and modulation of/against/for Chapter 1, Geeks and Recursive Publics, of Part 1, The Internet. I apologize in advance for this article’s long, rambling nature. If you comment, it’ll help me to organize my thoughts for the future.

Free software… to hormone-crazed, socially-bungling Japanophiles? Where’s the segue? On one hand, I could say the Internet (the title of Part 1, hey hey, coincidence?, I think not!) and only be half right. On one foot, I could say geeks, and become a tad closer to the answer. Doing a handstand, though, if I uttered “recursive public,” I just hit the bullseye. And on the topic of recursive publics is where I will tie in my latter, Connecticon-bound presentation. I want to bring in the demographic of fans of Japanese animation (also known colloquially as otaku), unrelated to any matter in the book, as an experiment in modulation: instead of responding directly to Kelty’s content, in this post I will try to flesh out, squish, and redefine the idea of recursive publics while applying the concept to another relevant population of geeks.

To begin, let’s simplify this notion of recursive public. Kelty’s definition essentially boils down to a population that deals with a content through a form, yet the content and form are the same thing. To develop it slightly further, a recursive public works through the form to protect the content mediated by the form. Kelty uses the Internet as his example, being the form that geeks use and through which geeks mediate. Geeks want to foster the Internet by coding the Internet to their own specifications (bounded by the geek moral order). Very meta indeed. Putting a quote against my simplification, “A recursive public is a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public” (Kelty 28).

Recursive publics are not limited to geeks or the Internet. Kelty does not provide examples of branches. One possible example: American Republicans and Democrats might be considered inclusive to the recursive public scene. Political subtleties aside, both parties exist as part of the government — the medium through which they operate and the content on which they focus their operations. Government also is the medium that allows the parties to “come into being in the first place” (28).

But there’s more to recursive publics, in fact another element entirely. Kelty discusses the concept of “layers,” regarding which he says geeks can identify and connect to create new structures to operate the form. He writes, “[Geeks] express ideas, but they also express infrastructures through which ideas can be expressed (and circulated) in new ways” (29). This second element ties in with the idea that recursive publics “argue through” their medium(s)” (29). Kelty highlights the combination of Napster and network connections to form a miniature scale of the Internet at large. The layering process then provides additional support for the population of the recursive public to develop and protect the medium.

Otaku are part of a recursive public. However, the demographic of anime and manga fans interacting with their medium fundamentally challenges Kelty’s notion of the recursive public. Why: the anime fandom’s medium is, obviously, animation. However, most anime fans do not have the technical expertise or sometimes even amateur aptitude to interact with the animated medium. For anime fans, it is easy to “express ideas” yet difficult to “express infrastructures” (29).

I’ll step away from that difficulty for a moment. First, I want to tackle the ideology of the recursive public. In a long-winded explanation, Kelty basically argues that recursive publics operate through a type of morality, one that structures the goals of the community. To reiterate, geeks of the recursive public participate in “writing and publishing and speaking and arguing” but also make software for “circulation, archiving, movement, and modifiability” of those forms of rhetorical communication. In total, arguments and the methods employed to sculpt those arguments evolve into a sense of morality which will govern future arguments and methods. It’s all very cyclical, but “the circularity is essential to the phenomenon. A public might be real and efficacious, but its reality lies in just this reflexivity by which an addressable object is conjured into being in order to enable the very discourse that gives it existence” (48).

To return to the otaku: these geeks too share a moral ideology based in the medium of animation. Examples include the cease of the distribution of fansubs (subtitles added to the original Japanese animation, distributed for foreign audiences) once an animated series is licensed by a US company, or doujinshi (comic book remixes of series) that do not copy the original series but build upon it [this latter topic is discussed in Chapter 1 of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture]. This morality, then, continues on to affect what Kelty calls “changing relations of power and knowledge” (29). Japanese animation, particularly dealing with fans in the US, has challenged the current production market and copyright itself, particularly regarding Free Use. And although barely developed as that of the culture of free software, the power and authority in otaku culture continues to change, led by greats such as Toshio Okada and Takashi Murakami.

But I must return to and address the problem of the formulation of infrastructures when animation is the medium. Can a recursive public exist when a technical boundary is inherently set up in the public’s system? Let’s examine a possible route to the solution: topical and metatopical spaces. Kelty recognizes that geeks of free software do not congregate in topical spaces, meaning assembly in the physical arena, but instead “[knit] a plurality of spaces into one larger space of non-assembly” (39). Anime fans in the US, contrarily, began in so-called topical spaces (also known as mom’s basement), eventually immigrating to the Internet where the fandom now continues to thrive. Is it possible that because the culture of free software began online that its followers automatically shared the prowess necessary to participate fully in both argument and creation, and they shared such knowledge and capabilities between each other, while otaku might not possess these technical traits because they did not mature in the presence of the medium (layman’s terms: they weren’t animators, so should we expect them to animate?).

That’s certainly a pressing question to Toshio Okada, co-founder of Gainax (one of the original major Japanese animation production companies) and self-proclaimed Otaking. So pressing, in fact, that he has declared, “Otaku are dead.” What can he mean, when thousands of American anime fans are running around with their heads cut off at hundreds of conventions across the United States yearly. Just that: with their heads cut off, today’s fans have no direction.

In a public talk, recorded by Otaku2.com, Okada answered the following question:

You mentioned that there is a gap between fan generations, or yours and that of today. Can you elaborate on this?

Okada: I think there is a big difference that is clear in what is popular. Take manga, which is selling in the mainstream, and series popular with maniacs, which are not selling. “Clover and Honey” is a good example. Some people just buy it, some are fans and only a few are maniacs who really dive into the series, so it fails to move the masses. The manga becomes nothing but a topic of discussion among older men who compete on who read it more properly. When with others, these tangents don’t go well and a discussion never takes off. The media can’t talk about otaku as one anymore because we aren’t. There is no core literature or readership. I don’t think I can explain this well enought to convince you, but anyway.

Okada is famously known for his participation on the infamous otaku commentary, Otaku no Video, a major yet sardonic commentary on the state of otaku in Japan. As a producer, though, Okada exemplifies the paragon leader of the otaku recursive public: one who comments on and comments through the form. He sees, though, a major change in generations of otaku, which leads to his harsh declaration. Describing his own generation of anime fans, Okada said at MIT in 2003: “These were fans who were so passionate and enthusiastic about anime that they became vocal and informed critics.” Speaking of the modern anime fanatic, he stated, “Unfortunately… the latest generation of anime viewers in Japan are not true Otaku. They may be anime fans, but they lack the deep, passionate connection to the medium, and many of them seem to have taken up anime fandom because it’s cool or “fashionable.” Rather than being active critics of anime, they are content to be customers, or consumers.” Okada is right about many viewers even five years later, today, as teenagers attend anime conventions with nothing short of shoutouts to Naruto and Bleach. Still, there are some fans that put their critical eye to work to uphold the name of otaku, but cannot argue for anime through the infrastructure of animation. How should they be considered in a culture that began as a recursive public yet has in recent times reverted to a mere consumer culture? A younger Okada, seeing no good animation after the end of the original Gundam series way back when, participated in the creation of two original animated shorts, Daicon III and Diacon IV (the latter of which, if you watch it quickly, contains a homage to Star Wars of all things). The importance of these novelties remains the fact that the recursive public protects the content by arguing through the form. Okada’s message to young fans rings with Keltyism: “Just make your own anime, in English, by yourself.”

I’m not depressed. The phrase “All is not lost” is too drastic to use, yet it would encompass a little bit of the situation. But only a little, because the situation is improving. Paul “Otaking” Johnson recently published on YouTube a criticism of the online fansubbing community, a five-part video series which begins here. It’s just one example of the recursive public finally taking a stand once again. In an interview not too long ago, he stated, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. My video was free and I got paid nothing, but it didn’t stop me researching translation theory for a year or hand drawing and animating the cut scenes just to grab people’s attention (they certainly wouldn’t stick around for my voice, that’s for sure!),” which exemplifies exactly what Okada wanted out of the new otaku generation. Other models include Makoto Shinkai, who animated his own story, Voices of a Distant Star and went on to produce a number of other anime, or even the father of Japanese animation, Osamu Tezuka, who copied Disney’s style to form the foundation of what would compose anime fandom today, who animated for entertainment yet still included his own acute commentary on post-war Japan.

Back to the issue, though: What happens when a fan simply can’t do this sort of high-caliber work?

Layers. The second element in Kelty’s concept. What does Japanese animation become when applied to new intrastructural models? Doujinshi. Anime music videos. Cosplay. Fansubs. Remixed comic books. Reworked animation set to music. Dressing up as characters. Subtitling original show material. All these examples are miniature structures of the animation scene at large, yet do not require the ultimate technical expertise vital to the production of genuine animation. But Kelty does not approach the potential for layers to avoid manifestation as the actual infrastructure (eg. Internet) and instead form new forms of the infrastructure. Unfortunately, for free software in relation to the Internet, no new form of the infrastructure exists, because there is only one Internet. For anime, though, animation exists as media with many offsets. Anime fans congregate in topical and metatopical spaces. Otaku participate as much as possible as the true nature of the recursive public has begun to resurface over the last decade. Hopefully as technology advances fans will be provided a more accessible platform to evolve the recursive public and resurrect the name of otaku.

Please comment on this second post in the Two Bits Processor Project, and please visit the blogs of my friends who are participating with me on this most excellent project:

Tim Hwang, blogging at The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches
Christina Xu, blogging at ComPromise
yours truly, blogging at DianaKimball.com
Mike Wolfe, blogging at Machinations
And me, Alex Leavitt, blogging here

Chris Kelty. Teaching at Rice University as a professor of anthropology. Visiting Harvard to teach History of Science & Tech. Popping out of a small beach top.

Actually, this is not Chris Kelty. This picture just so happens to be the first result in a Flickr tag search for “kelty.” However, it’s not unfortunate that Chris isn’t a black-haired, bikini-clad bombshell, because he is, in fact, the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (read it here or buy it here).

If you’ve been turned off to this post because I have disappointed you with dreams of scantily-clad ladies, I apologize. To make up for my indiscretion, I present to you the real Chris Kelty, to provide an introduction to what will henceforth be called the Two Bits Processor Project:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdGBxCqDLJ8]

Chris explains Two Bits as a toolbox for asking questions. A quote that acts as a perfect segue into explaining the methodology behind the *echoing announcer’s voice* Two. Bits. Processor. Project. Essentially… Five people. Five blogs (FYI, each letter of the word blogs is a separate link). Nine chapters, one introduction, and one conclusion. One section per week. Compose and comment and collaborate. Chris calls this modulation (I call it awesome). Hopefully our endeavor will succeed more fully than a two-bit processor would ever operate, but I have much confidence. For a much more starry-eyed and reflective introduction to our (Tim, Christina, Diana, Mike’s, and my) project, check out Diana’s post.

Following is, first, a reaction to the Introduction of Kelty’s Two Bits and then two lighthearted rejoinders in light of the book as a book.

一番：前置き

Two Bits is an anthropological ethnography, which might also be known as a description of the customs of a people. Example: puking into their children’s mouths might be a topic relevant to a penguin ethnography. Together, these multiple customs equal a culture. For geeks, the focal group of the book, Kelty describes their culture in terms of, in one light, “figuring things out… in discussion… designing, planning, executing, writing, debugging, hacking, and fixing” (Kelty 18). Since Two Bits comes off as a more anthropological text, Kelty writes that a lot of stories will “illustrate what geeks are like.”

But where do geeks stand as a culture in society? I think this is necessary to understand before tackling a book of this caliber (unless Kelty explains that in Chapter One and thence I am hosed). Bluntly, he emphasizes geek nature: “vocal, loud, persistent, and loquacious” (19), a strange dichotomy compared to a backdrop of popular opinion regarding ’80s and ’90s high school kinetics (à la Sixteen Candles. A couple of decades later and geeks are getting more press than getting shoved into lockers. Basically, geeks have a voice. A statement that leads into a revelation of my own English-major-based nerdgasm when I spotted a convoluted reference to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s seminal essay, Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988). In her treatise, Spivak defends what she terms the subaltern, associated with the regional persons or groups outside of the hegemonic structure of power. Specifically, she argues for a dominant voice not to represent the repressed classes of the Indian subcontinent, but for some utterance to escape these peoples’ mouths, to speak for themselves by themselves. The remixed allusion that Kelty creates is that “The superalterns can speak for themselves” (19). In the twenty-first century, geeks have leapt up the social ladder in measures of numerous rungs. We geeks have a voice that others listen to in society. And because we have a voice, we can initiate what Kelty describes as the “reorientation of power and knowledge” (6).

Because geeks have a voice, though, it seems that Kelty finds this fact to be a barrier in the composition of the book. However, it is not a hindrance. Instead of having to explain geeks as a people, he can use them to explain themselves, since they are so prominent on the Internet that it’s impossible not to find the unavoidable information. He elucidates, “I am less interested in treating geeks as natives to be explained and more interested in arguing with them: the people in Two Bits are a sine qua non of the ethnography, but they are not the objects of its analysis” (19).

The wonderful thing about geeks becomes their habitation: the Internet. Kelty explains the benefit: “[A] very important aspect of the contemporary Internet… is its singularity: there is only one Internet” (9). Tim highlights in his modulation that Kelty’s ethnography isn’t localized. We don’t see a professor exploring the forbidden highlands of Southeast Whoknowswheresia. Instead, Kelty deals with people, what they do, and how they do it, via the Internet. But the point that the monopoly of the Internet exists solely by itself goes beyond possibility and potential of geographic limitation or liberation. Just like geography, geeks work in one space and work for that space. Proud, Kelty says, “The outcome of [the decisions to create certain configurations, standards, and protocols to make the Internet work] has been to privilege the singularity of the Internet and to champion its standardization” (9). The convenience is simply that the world’s geeks live a beep and a click miles away from each other. It’s glocalization on a metaphysical (both senses) scale.

二番：題名

I want to have a bit of fun trying to dissect Two Bits. As an English major, I take pleasure in titles, so I want to examine what the moniker suggests as we move into the text.

An excerpt from Kelty’s website explaining the cover art of the book:
“The cover of Two Bits features one panel from a series of paintings by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), a symbolist painter from Lyon and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The series is called The Muses of Inspiration Hail the Spirit, the Harbinger of Light and decorates the entrance hall of the Boston Public Library. The particular panel on the cover is called “Physics: By the wondrous agency of Electricity, Speech flashes through Space,” and represents the telegraph. I’ve heard it said of this panel that it is colloquially called “Good News and Bad News.” Hence, Two Bits” (http://twobits.net/cover/).

So, good news and bad news. Is that what I’ll have to expect from the book? I wasn’t foreseeing a Zittrain in the least. Personally, the first impression of the title alluded to the phrase my two cents to refer to a unique opinion, namely Kelty’s. Considering the idiom, would such a cheaply-priced opinion be of any worth? A minimal amount of sleuthing revealed both value (importance of putting a stamp on your letter) and aquality (disrespect for pennies as currency).

However, two bits may also refer to the equivalency of twenty-five cents. Hey, that’s one pay phone call, or used to be. Lack of value now that we’re all on cells?

I’ll tell you what gives value to the phrase, though. Apparently two bits is a response to the idiom shave and a haircut, which isn’t an idiom at all but a tune with which we should all be familiar. If you peruse that Wikipedia entry, you’ll discover that the equivalent of “two bits” in vulgar colloquialisms equates to “You bastard!” I have no idea how this fits into Kelty’s vision in the least, but if you’re ever reading the book on the T and someone insults you, shove the text in his face. Maybe Free Software will make a small impact on that SOB’s life.

三番：本か画素

Another influence of the literature concentration on my approach to texts is to view the content in terms of the form. I attended the talk that Kelty gave at MIT to announce Two Bits, and in the Q&A session an audience member inquired as to the benefits and consequences of the book being released in PDF form online for free. Thus the room gave birth to a discussion concerning the value of books. In the end, it really comes down to paying for a physical object that satisfies the carnal needs in our fingertips. Kelty did succeed in arguing that bookstores in most rural communities across the U.S. would probably not carry the text due to its highly technical nature, not relevant to the general populace in the area. The PDF online provides the opportunity for individuals in these communities to check out the book with the potential for them to purchase it post-skim.

I bring up the argument, though, because the circulation of a text online satisfies the criteria of an instance where the attitudes behind the Free Software movement transfer to another realm, namely market politics. Two Bits in PDF, as a form, reflects the practices that Kelty enumerates in his arguments. The book online also mirrors what Kelty explains as part of the “spectrum of political activity” in which geeks participate: “[Geeks] can both express and ‘implement’ ideas” of Free Software in Free Software.

I’ll end this post with some of the other excepts that I marked off whilst reading through the Introduction that I felt were necessary to mention, if not explicate, and to which I might return in the reading of Two Bits:

• “By culture, I mean an ongoing experimental system…” – When we approach the concept of a culture, do we not consider it in light of its traditionalism more than its fluidity?
• “‘For more people, the Internet is porn, stock quotes, Al Jazeera clips of executions, Skype, seeing pictures of the grandkids, porn, never having to buy another encyclopedia, MySpace, e-mail, online housing listings, Amazon, Googling potential romantic interests, etc. etc.’ It is impossible to explain all of these things…” – Can these items actually be explained?
• “Nearly all kinds of media are easier to produce, publish, circulate, modify, mash-up, remix, or reuse.” – Which media are difficult to [verb]?
• “Coding, hacking, patching, sharing, compiling, and modifying of software are forms of political action that now routinely accompany familiar political forms of expression like free speech, assembly, petition, and a free press.” – It seems as if this statement was more applicable a few years ago…
• Modifiability therefore raises a very specific and important question about finality. When is something (software, a film, music, culture) finished? How long does it remain finished? Who decides? Or more generally, what does its temporality look like…? – No comment. This deserves it’s own future post.
• What does it mean to plan in modifiability to culture, to music, to education and science? – I wonder how many people would comprehend the potential to/for remix.

I, along with my benevolent colleagues over at the Two Bits Processor Project, always encourage commenting on our modulations, or creating a modulation of your own.

I’ve already discussed the social tools used (or overused, or underused?) during Berkman@10, but of course as at any conference much real networking occurred as well. Not one particularly adept as networking in any sense, I did meet an excellent bunch of new contacts and friends. I didn’t speak with many adults — probably a mistake on my part — but I did make the acquaintance of Jeff Young from the Chronicle of Higher Education; Miriam Simun, the coordinator of research in the Digital Natives project over at the Berkman Center; and recently-graduated Andy Sellars. Of course, I’m extremely sociable with those my own age, so I spent a good deal of time speaking with and hanging around Diana Kimball, Tim Hwang, Dean Jansen, Greg Price, Christina Xu, David Edelman (from Oxford University) and Rob (aka. moot, of 4chan). I have to admit: I’ll probably be attending more Harvard Free Culture events than those of BUFC in the future. On the other hand, two pieces of really good news: First, I spoke with Miriam about participating in the Digital Natives project next spring as an intern, after I return from Japan, and the potential looks good. Second, after talking at length with Christina and Diana, it looks like I may have a spot on the team of ROFLCon 2008. All in all, I took away a bunch of real-world connections from Berkman@10 and now I’m hooked on attending conferences.

If anyone’s willing to help me fund a trip to Washington D.C., I really want to go to Beyond Broadcast 2008 at American University on June 17th. Maybe I’ll get some cash from my 21st birthday on June 8th *hint hint*.

Finals probably hit me at the worst possible point in May. Well, at a good point, because I had a very relaxing respite from academics as well as conferences. However, I planned that respite to be my time to write more about Anime Boston, and to begin formulating articles about ROFLCon and the multiple lectures I’ve attended at MIT and Harvard over the past month. Instead, I studied hard and long, neglecting any urges to write, and now I’m sitting in the middle of Berkman@10, fretting in my seat because I want to write so much about some of the things I’ve heard this morning, but so much of it relates to items that I wanted to bring up in discussing the lectures and ROFLCon and… I suppose my approach might have to be melding everything together, although my productions will be much more disjointed than I had hoped.

To discuss at least one thing that I felt I needed to say, regarding liveblogging. Last night I attended a pre-conference event at the Harvard Kennedy School, entitled Civic Engagement and the Youth Vote in the 2008 Elections, hosted by the Berkman Center collaborating with the Institute of Politics. I won’t discuss the content of the panel discussion, but I want to point out that when I was sitting with my laptop taking notes, a woman from the Berkman Center was sitting right next to me, typing away into WordPress, liveblogging the event (the results of which you can read here).

In the interim between talks this morning, I met Andrew Sellars, who recently graduated from Northeastern University. We talked a lot about how we became interested in attending the event, the dichotomy between paying attention and multitasking, and eventually discussed how to approach the conference with its advertisement of so many social tools to use during the discussion. I bought up liveblogging and we both agreed that the method is at least a bit moot (you’ll see his liveblogs over at his website, /irony/), since the liveblogger never gets the opportunity to simply sit back and take in everything, to breathe the content, to turn it over and finds its gaps, to discover where it succeeds. I’ve discussed my one attempt at liveblogging, and I just didn’t get anything out of it. I want to be able to comprehend the content. So, in my frenzy to continue debating the issues and values at Berkman@10, as well as include everything that I’ve wanted to talk about for the past month… wait. It’s coming. I may have to type away the inked letters on my keyboard for the next three weeks though.

And, of note:
- I finally met, in person, Diana Kimball, who I really blame for starting me on this whole adventure. Hey, she writes well.
- Where do I get one of these Berkman 10 track jackets???

My obsession with blogs exploded at the beginning of 2008, when I began reading through Diana Kimball‘s website (she’s on the ROFLcon staff) and finally discovered Henry Jenkins’ blog (the director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies department). Actually, I would say it really began over the summer, when I began to download hundreds of podcasts and listen to them while working in the basement of Harvard’s Houghton Library (aka. my summer job). A month’s worth of audio later, I became addicted to searching out information on the Internet. Combined with my discovery of the MIT CMS website and the concentration of media studies, this quest to learn from the bloggers of the simply escalated into hours of “healthy” procrastination.

I have been a “blogger” for a good while now through LiveJournal’s platform, mainly commenting on the quotidianities of my life. This year, I was inspired to actually give birth to my own weblog, because I felt an urge to actually respond to the articles I was reading.

The problems associated with publishing my own writing, though, are endless.

For one, I always feel as if I will plagiarize, not someone’s work, but someone’s idea. Actually, with my luck over the past three months of 2008, I have had a multitude of light bulb clicks for articles that ultimately end up on the New York Times or one of the Berkman Center’s blogs. In the first few years of the new millennium, I realized that we basically live in the Age of the Experts. To be original means to win the race to a niche idea and publish it, either in Barnes & Noble or on a webpage.

Realizing that I will probably not have many entirely novel theories and thoughts, I present my second problem: the awareness that much of my writing will not, in fact, be original, but instead be in response to other blogs, scholarly publications, and newspaper articles. Not that this is a bad thing. In fact, many bloggers appreciate feedback on what they have written. And these bloggers usually respond to the comments they receive. Essentially, I am continue the circular supply-and-demand economy of digital information.

The difference with white paper publication remains that I can participate in a similar economy, working inside my head. When I read and reread my old posts, then get a craving to edit my horrible style decide to add a few tidbits to an article, I can easily edit it. Back in high school, when I wrote a paper, it was done — I had no desire to look at it again. With a constant bombardment of information, I would not be surprised to find myself editing older articles more often than continuing them in new posts. So, I’ll try my hardest to add a header to each emended entry.

Where will I go with this blog? Hopefully to graduate school (no, seriously). Topically, I want to write as much about Internet culture as possible. On the side, I’ll comment on my classes at Boston University, my experiences swing dancing in Boston, and those thoughts that would make great subjects for first-year university writing seminars. Maybe I’ll even take a few of my articles, expand them in my free time, and publish a few in actual magazines. I’m feeling ambitious. But, hey, we can do anything with the Internet.