blog alice - blog b.s.

hand check!

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 17:25:06 -0400

newscientist.com reports that a robot has been invented whose function it is to perform breast exams.

The robotic grasper also measures the consistency of objects in its grasp by means of feedback to its motors. And this tactile information is fee back to the mechanical glove giving the wearer an artificial sensation of touch.
The arm also incorporates an ultrasound sensor as well as three video cameras, to give the expert a good view of the procedure.

voyeurism at its finest. you have to love the angle of the shot. guys love silicone bigger than their heads, right?

blog advertising. REALLY.

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:23:15 -0400

for all you bloggers out there getting flack for advertising on your site, here's a fast solution. this goes out to genia at sisters talk, who claimed that blogging advertising helped to put her kids through school.

i made it! i made it!

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 12:11:22 -0400

supposedly, when tori amos got all weepy over the number of bootlegs of her stuff coming out in the early 90s, robert plant bought her a copy of one and handed it to her, telling her that having a bootleg out of your stuff means "you made it."

well, today i got my first set of spam comments--mortgage offers, ironically--so, i guess that means i've made it! right? um yeah. if this keeps up, i guess i need to go the route of dr.b. and only accept comments from registered users.

blog advertising

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:50:30 -0400

A few brief points for further consideration:

In a world of mass corporate globalization, supporting advertising stands as an oppressor to the less priveleged on earth--see sweatshops, etc. So if I was claiming that my blog was not being distributed because of the color of my skin or my sexuality, me being the oppressed, why would I support an industry that continues to widen the divide between "First" and "Third" World, North and South, capital-rich vs. no capital whatsoever? Isn't advertising on the blog simply feeding back into this oppressive culture?

If a person's blog is NOT a public arena, then why should advertising be used? Especially if the blog is relegated to a select few users. And if advertising is used to "feed children", wouldn't the blogger anticipate as many hits as possible in order to make sure the kids get a T-bone once in awhile, rather than censor users from the blog site?

i've....been...censored!! woohoo!!

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:38:33 -0400

*momentarily boosting these to the top, as I think the convo is far from over Date: 4/16/05**
From:	Genia <geniastevens@gmail.com>
To:	adamore@purdue.edu
Subject:	Your post at SistersTalk

Stay off my blog, thank you.
I didn't see anything about visual rhetoric in Utopian Hell's original
comments about bloggers who use advertisements. I responded to what I read
and I responded on my blog. I have not visited her blog and made any
comments to her. You stay on her blog and make all the comments you want. I
am not interested in what her friends have to say. I know what I read. I
know what I saw. She can say what she needs to sy about me on her blog. I
will say what I need to say about her on my blog.
Thank you.

So now, I guess this means that all blogs are NOT public arenas for shared discourse. They are there to defend the owner's views? Not to open minds to other realms of thought? Or am I too idealistic? This is very strange to me. Yeah, it's a "touchy" issue; I get those in the graduate classroom everyday. But to restrict another person's commentary...I don't know. I'd link to my post, but I have no desire to advertise this blog. You can look it up :o)

blogging power structures

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:39:46 -0400

I just finished reading utopian hell's great little response to the folks she criticized for using too much advertising on their blog. She generated this discussion in a previous post, where she discussed her division of the blogs she links to on her sites into categories--free (no or little advertising) and unfree (you can guess). And for this division and her commentary, she has been criticized (see the original post on SistersTalk, where the blogger claims to have "fed her children" by blogging....interesting. I personally think it's the sign:

of a discerning blogger
of someone who is tired of being blinded by gophers who beg to be whacked for a trip to Cancun
of someone who feeds her children by maybe leaving the house
of a blogger who is moving to politicize the process of blogging itself (see the discussion on 'marxism'--it's a hoot)

You go, U.H. Create resistance and respond to it.

online communities

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:07:46 -0400

Regarding Culture Cat's trouble with capitalist commenters, Dr.B. asked on her site: "The question that I asked over at cyberdash was this: What (if anything) does the death of anonymous commenting do to the notion of online community building? Is it going to be changed by the fact that some people are just going to refuse to register?" For me, this ties directly to Chris M. Anson's article "Distant Voices: Teaching and Writing in a Culture of Technology." As he builds to his point, Anson cites the Pew Higher Education Roundtable's assertion that "the problem is that faculty--and hence the institutions they serve--have approached technology more as individual consumers than as collective producers" [Cross-Talk in Comp Theory 798--from College English 61.3 (199): 261-80]. Collective producers. Can we have a space not invaded by ALL of the community? Can we privatize online communication? I don't think so.

We are collective producers AND consumers, and those that deem to profit from these communities, whether at home during dinner, ringing the phone, through mass emailing, or through parasitizing popular blogging sites, are going to do just that, profit. Granted, Anson is referring to the Roundtable's concern regarding faculty ignorance of technology and its applications in the classroom; but I'm contesting that this profiteering that weasels its way in and maligns and clogs sites that desire merely one type of discourse IS part of the community. My blog isn't nearly so popular as to be recognized, YET, by this community. But think again. When Tori Amos was frantic over bootlegs made of her concerts back in 91, Robert Plant suggested to her that she hadn't "made it yet" until she was bootlegged. Music is distributed to a community, and that community, for better or worse, is going to parasitize and (mis)appropriate that music, writing, creativity, for its own gain. Another community feeding from another community--all the same community? Is it possible to privatize a community, when community is defined as:

com·mu·ni·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-myn-t)
n. pl. com·mu·ni·ties

A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
The district or locality in which such a group lives.

A group of people having common interests: the scientific community; the international business community.
A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society: the gay community; the community of color.

Similarity or identity: a community of interests.
Sharing, participation, and fellowship.
Society as a whole; the public.

A community of interests. A sharing, participation, and fellowship. The public (parasites included). Anson continues, "new technologies introduced with the overriding goal of creating economic efficiencies and generating increased revenues may lead to even greater exploitation in the area of writing instruction . . . the servant of the academy" (799). Indeed, the academies are present to make profits, and they are part of the community. Then how does Anson presume that "the key to sustaining our pedagogical advances in the teaching of writing . . . will be to take control of these technologies, using them in effective ways and not, in the urger for ever-cheaper instruction, substituting them for those contexts and methods that we hold to be essential for learning to write" (799-800)? Technology is available to us. We may manipulate it in a way that we feel WILL be controlled by US, the LEADERS of this community. But when the technology is in the community's hands, do we have the right to control it? Do we have the right to alienate certain members, certain student manipulations of the medium, certain parasites? I would like to say, "I hope to hell so!" But I don't think that's the answer (because despite all of the restrictions out there, spamguards, tutelage, etc., the community is still parasitizing. The bigger question, is it POSSIBLE to exclude the community from the community?