Dorothea writes:
Demanding that all web-expression meet all applicable standards from the get-go is tantamount to turning web-expression into the over-professionalized, controlled-from-the-top cheesy-stardom-fest that is most of American culture today. I’d quit blogging first. Part of maintaining a vibrant culture, a culture of participation rather than consumption, (you listening to me, Tom?) is accepting work of less than ideal quality.
She and I have had some email chats about this, and I'm of two minds: Mind 1: Riotous agreement. This is a breaking of the vessels thing. Not just open mike, but open form. The more one swims in this chronostream, the more the norms of standard ''professional'' print organization and rhetoric seem dysfunctional, counterproductive, de trop.
Online writing - blogging, at least, which seems a sort of indigenous online writing - has a much more subtle hortatory threshold, and exploits real time and immediacy of context and reference in ways that print pubs can't, because they're frozen, dead, and delivered by trucks, even when they're online. So, yes, participation, not consumption. Mind B: Not a but but an and: Web expression and participation has more going on than performance. There's a lot of sharing and pointing (eg, MMO, or parts of Jeff Ward, or new things) and indirection that offer something more like value-added contemplation than like karaoke. Not that I would ban karaoke. I just unilaterally reserve the right to exempt myself from ritual attendance.
