I think your break was over 5 minutes ago

Just to continue my frustrated post about Internet workflow, let me describe my current Twitter problem. This promises to be a really boring, personal anecdote with little to know application to you.

I'm trying to turn some of my twitter updates into blog posts. I've got a WordPress plugin to grab the tweets. Great. But I don't want to grab every tweet, because then conversation tweets that are out of context will be grabbed. But I don't want to edit the "spontaneity" of twitter, either.

So I got a 2nd twitter account that will be the "instant blog post" account. Now I can cross-post the tweets I want to go to the blog, and keep the boring ones on the big boring feed.

But how to cross-post? TweetDeck for iPhone works great. Type the tweet, and activate the buttons for which accounts you want the message to go to. But TweetDeck for Desktop gums up my works. First, Adobe Air takes a lot of resources on my old computer. Second, I like to do everything I can in the browser (one "minimize" clears the screen. Tabs are great.)

I keep an instance of TwitterGadget going in my iGoogle page, which is a collection of frames with similar little web apps. The nice thing is that it automatically updates itself. But it can't handle multiple accounts, or log in multiple instances on the same page.

No good Twitter extensions for Chrome that I can find, and certainly none that allow multiple accounts.

So here I am, with a Twitter problem that no one has invented a solution for yet. But is my problem even really a problem? Well, no. If it was a popular problem, someone would have come up with a solution.

But this IS the problem. The workflow of the Internet revolves around helping the majority of people do the things that the majority of people would like to do. Is my need to turn tweets into blogposts in the way I want a crucial task for humanity? Of course not. And if I even thought it was a bit innovative, I might learn enough programming to do it myself. But I won't, and so here I stay, in the same Twitter rut. Which is fine. But this is not good workflow for a "manufacturing environment", if that is what I think I'm doing with all these little witticisms and links to photos of bridges and stuff.

I guess the productive environment of writing, art, and other communicative arts have never really had any manufacturing form, as it were. Certain formal skill sets yes, but because it is largely an individual practice there's been no need for assembly line dynamics. Maybe this is changing? Post-human-individual writing is definitely going to need a line. And a union. Otherwise humanity is going to treat their artist-components the way artists treat their livers. Whether the Internet qualifies as sufficiently post-individual or not is still not resolved.

Interdome Content-Object Shakeup

Been thinking a lot about Tim's (of Quiet Babylon internet-fame) project, "Unlink Your Feeds".

The problem of multiple, interlinked feeds has long been a burgeoning neurosis of mine.

Let me share my problems with you!!!

I love interconnectivity. I use my Google account with great zest, trying out the new features as they add them. A lot of them are useful, but a lot of them I try to use, simply because having everything linked together makes it easy to experiment. I don't have to invent a new password and username to try X service, I just click the link. If I don't like it, I just stop using it, and never pay it another thought.

Additionally, Google's interconnectedness is a huge plus. There are plenty of portals and application uses between Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and so on, which I don't have to spell out for you. I use my iGoogle page as my widget desktop, and then access my cloud holdings from there. The interconnectedness makes it superior in function even when it lacks particular features, and all of this has made me continue using Blogger rather than going solely to Wordpress, caused me to shun Facebook, and even avoid using Twitter for a long time.

But Twitter... oh, oh Twitter.

It's just too damn easy. All those one-line witticisms I come up with during the day, with no one to share them. The ease of retweeting, rather than saying something original. The ability to take a picture of a strange car and share it with the world, all from my cell phone, while still driving with my knees.

Twitter isn't owned by Google.

So, I have this other feed going. In addition to my RSS feed, and my Reader feed. Now that I know what a wonderful world Twitter is, I get curious as to what the hold-outs who refuse to get Twitter are saying on Facebook. And I think maybe I should start cross-posting to Facebook.

Then they created Buzz, which is the Google-Twitter I always wanted, except that it still sucks, so everyone read on Twitter is still only on Twitter. So I linked my Twitter feed to Buzz, as well as my reader account.

And now I live in this hellish world I have helped create.

Tim is right--we cannot live like this. And while the idea of cutting the feeds free, and using each as each is best suited has a nice, Marxist "to each according to his need" sort of feel, I still have this need for interconnectedness. I just can't blog, feed Reader, Tweet, Buzz, and Facebuke (the verb?) separately and simultaneously. Hell, I'm supposed to be writing books! I still want to maintain my Internet presence, and read what I want to read, so there has to be some over lap.

How, oh, how, can I make all this damn technology work for me?

The secret to using a Google Account, in my opinion, is to be flexible, and also to be patient. Many things work, and over time, Google makes them work better. And, work better together. Also, as I experiment with different tools, I change my use of them as they work, and work differently, together. Only recently did Google Docs get to a point where I was comfortable doing serious writing with it. And, since I spend less time online in "open surf mode" than I used to, I now only bookmark certain feed posts, rather than keep detailed notes about various web sites.

The same is possible with my feeds. I think I've hit upon a way to link them so that people who want to know what the deal is can still find out, without redundancy, and with most of the input automated.

This is the way it is working now:

I am looking at these feeds in terms of objects of communication. Any feed-ready information posted to the web is an object, treated as an individual, accessible, feedable piece. Different classes of objects hold different amounts and kinds of content, which may or may not overlap other objects' capacities for content.

Additionally, certain objects may have a certain shape, which allows them to fit into different data flows or lines of assembly (feeds). For example, I can set up Buzz to attach Twitter-objects to Buzz-objects in my Buzz feed. However, this shape is a shape of intensive flows (in the sense that it allows a certain change-of-state transition of the object, rather than a transitivity, like A = B = C). I'm getting all complicated with my terms, but basically, think of it like how yeast can bake into a loaf of bread, but bread cannot be dissected back into yeast. A Buzz-object cannot be translated into a Twitter-object (at least not yet).

RSS is the smallest common denominator in terms of objects, more or less. Any feed, be it Twitter or Facebook or a blog, almost always has an RSS feed generated with it. There are various tools to mash RSS feeds together, Yahoo Pipes being the most well-known. However, I am doing this because I don't want to create a new feed, I want to merge and ally the feeds of services I already use. Many of these services also have APIs, and perhaps I could work out some sort of program for managing my posts among the feeds. However, I'm not so skillful in the programming department. Also, if I use the recognized features of these different feed services already in existence, I'll probably be in better shape down the line to adjust to new features, and also I have the services' dependability to fall back on.

Content-wise, Twitter is the smallest common denominator. You can't find anything smaller than 140 characters. I also use Twitter most frequently, because of its small content size.

Additionally, many objects translate into Twitter-objects. Via Feedburner, I can make my blog posts echo as Tweets. Using Tweetdeck, my mobile Twitter client, I can post to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously.

Granted, it is annoying to see someone's high score in a video game echoed as a Twitter post. However, I've been posting less and less on the blog, and when I do, it is a often something that started as a Tweet, but then grew too long. In this way, the Twitter-object derived from my blog's RSS feed is just a link to a memo, a "please see my memo re: X". The duplication is, in a sense, to force people to choose. Either they want my full feed, and tune in to the Twitter feed for the details, or if they wish they were spared my constant witticisms, they can just go to the blog RSS.

It is not yet possible to auto-transmute my Reader shared RSS to Twitter, but that's okay, because I can always post a single Reader item to Twitter via a sidebar tool. This is probably for the best, because I can share anything interesting to those who like my reading tastes, but reserve only the "mainstream" articles for my main, common denominator feed.

Buzz can, and in my case is posting all of these things together in one, lump feed. It is a taste of the chaos. But, because Buzz has set out to aggregate all of these things, it is less of a network in itself, with its own flavor, and more of simply an aggregator. The cool part is, it shows up in my Google profile, so if anyone happened upon me via Google, they could get a good taste of what I'm into on the Internet.

Blogger, with all the new Gadgets you can add into it, is looking more and more like MySpace every day. But this flexibility is good for me. I now have two columns here. One to store these text essays, and the other to provide an easy way to examine the difference between my feeds. The Twitter feed, on the top, is the general feed. Next is the blog only, then my Brute Press stuff only, then other-source RSS only. All of it retains its original, unique feed-object character and content, while one feed, the Twitter feed, acts as the main door way, strictly under my control.

Control, after all, is what this is all about. It's a personal micro-manager's Internet dream. The solution I just described for myself will undoubtably not work for anyone else. This probably won't even be my own solution in six months, as I discover new tools, and start using the tools I have differently.

This is the key philosophical lesson of Internet content, content-objects, and object feeds. (You knew there was going to be a philosophical lesson, didn't you?) If you told people in the blog boom that they would be abandoning their blogs for a service where you tapped in 140 characters with your thumbs from your cell phone, they would have thought you were crazy. Same thing if you tried to sell Gutenberg a Kindle, or some other such foolish spatial-temporal technology metaphor-mashup. I'm sure whatever's next will also be just as weird as the present, and the past. Time is aggregation, after all.

The tools we have to communicate change the way we communicate. Big surprise, no? I'm sure we'll eventually figure out our feeds, so we don't have to read cross-posts anymore. Otherwise we'll drown in echoes, or suffocate in Internet Balkanization catatonia. People will sort out how to mean what they want to mean to the people they want to mean it to. Right now, to me, I'm directing my meaning to the people who follow me on Twitter. If you don't like that feed, please consider the other options to the left. If you don't like that, there is plenty of other Internet out there.

This way, both my communications and the people to whom I communicate can grow towards each other and into each other, like roots into the earth.

Talking with machines

On the Twitter microsyntax front, Project EPIC is working out an emergency syntax for Haiti rescue communication efforts.

It's interesting to me because the syntax expression itself is not new, as it just uses hashtags. However, it utilizes hashtags for pre-set message components, as befitting important communication relay elements.

From the link above:

Our team and collaborators are proposing a Tweet-friendly hashtag-based syntax to help direct Twitter communications for more efficient data extraction for those communicating about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Use only requires modifications of Tweet messages to make information pieces that refer to #location, #status, #needs, #damage and several other elements of emergency communications more machine parsable.

EXAMPLE1: #haiti #imok #name John Doe #loc Mirebalais Shelter #status minor injuries

EXAMPLE2: #haiti #need #transport #loc Jacmel #num 10 #info medical volunteers looking for big boat to transport to PAP

EXAMPLE3: #haiti #need #translator #contact @pierrecote

EXAMPLE4: #haiti #ruok #name Camelia Siquineau #loc Hotel Montana

EXAMPLE5: #haiti #ruok #name Raymonde Lafrotune #loc Delmas 3, Rue Menelas #1

EXAMPLE6: #haiti #offering #volunteers #translators #loc Florida #contact @FranceGlobal


PRIMARY TAG
#need
#offering
#imok
#ruok
#damage
#injured
#road
.....

SECONDARY TAG
Need/Offering Descriptor Tags
#food
#water
#fuel
#medical of #med
#shelter
#transport
#volunteers... can shorten to #vols
#translator
#status
#status
#financial or #money
#information or #info
#supplies [list specific supplies needed]
.....

Data tags
#name [name]
#loc [location]
#num [amount or capacity]
#contact [email, phone, link, other]
#photo [link to photo]
#source [source of info]
#status [status]
.....

End Tag
#info [other information]

Overall order is not as important as tag-descriptor connection.

In a time of crisis, it makes sense to not quibble about whether slashes, backslashes, other symbols, or certain pre-set abbreviations make the most sense. And so, they've actually put something together quite sensible--they've basically converted a twitter post in a DB data record, with hashtag delimination. Any firehose sniffing program should be able to pick out and synthesize the relevant information from this list of tags.

They don't have any parsing programs showcased on the site, but they are live, tweeting with this syntax (@epiccolorado), and it shouldn't be too hard (for someone other than me) to build one pretty quickly.

There are some things I really like about this.

- It's simple. It takes a convention people already know, and re-uses it.

- It's basically making a simple little code book. One could print out the list of commonly-used tags on an index card, and in only a few seconds put together a message readable to the network of people looking for this format.

- It is indentifying a basic sentence structure, on a level up from "twitter syntax". This is new for Twitter semiotics. If you look at a commonly used syntax, such as the re-tweet, you will see a variety of different amalgamations of the syntax. Some put the "RT" first, or last, or some are now using "via" rather than "RT". Some RT only the last person in the RT chain, some put the first, or some put all. None of this matters, of course, because the message is still getting across. But with this EPIC format, the order of the tags matters, and yet is still a bit flexible. It leads with the identifier, "#haiti", and then continues in a line of primary, secondary, data, and then additional information tags to shape the message in an understandable way. The simplest way of forming a regular sentence is with [Subject] -> [Verb]. Then, you can expand that to [Subject] -> [Verb] -> [Object]. And then, [Subject] -> [Verb] -> [Object] -> [Adjective]. And then, [Subject] -> [Verb] -> [Adverb] -> [Object] -> [Adjective]. You get the idea. The position changes depending on what language you use, but our system of language is basically a database, assigning values to these different data types in a particular record, and then parsing the record in conjunction with other records. This EPIC format is doing that with the basic information types for crucial rescue information.

- It's readable by humans as well as machine. Anyone looking at a tweet in this format could tell what it means. In this way, it fits into the main trending flow of #haiti tweets, but also can be pulled out from the noise. It is a very ingenious, although simple, middle ground between incomprehensible DB record, and common language sentence. This is where I see the microsyntax on Twitter heading... some common, comprehensible ground between XML script and common language punctuation. It is an understandable written language, but syntaxed to be capable of being metadata.

It will be interesting to see how well this works in Haiti, but thinking ahead to the next disaster, they should print up laminated index cards with these tags on them, and syntax examples on the other side. They can air drop them, or distribute them with Twitterized cell phones. The beauty is that anyone can contribute to the information collection, using whatever means happens to work: cell phone, SMS, Internet, Twitter app, or even potentially voice. Add geotagging to the metadata, and you are getting near instant, localized, specifically formatted information from the ground. It should be pretty easy to go back and rank the tweets coming in, as DB reports are verified, bumping up users who provide good information. Any responder on the ground could easily be linked into the overall real-time awareness DB, without having to transfer on phone and radio, or waiting for confirmed contact. Report is made, and then the responder can go about his/her work.

Just wait until this sort of thing goes audible. Ten codes, the codes police and dispatch use over the radio, are currently being phased out all across the country because they are not unified, and sometimes cause confusion in hectic situations. But these are merely translations. One ten code stands for something else. What if they were syntactical codes, to let a computer or human listening know what sort of information was being read over the air? What if we are started using a vocal "click" to denote a hashtag, so the next spoken word would be known as an indexable primary or secondary tag, giving additional meaning to the data spoken next? It would be "plain speech", but plain speech imbued with metadata for easy compilation into DB style records. With voice-to-text-capture on the radio feed, there could be one open channel, with everyone speaking at once. The computer would capture the speech, complete with hash tags, and publish it to a readable timeline on the screen. The radio metadata (the unit's number is already included silently in the broadcast in current technology) would allow the dispatch or the particular units to follow the timeline of only particular units, say, involved on that particular response. You could listen to the open feed for instant vocal communication, or you could filter the feed to particular data tags.

Language has a great potential for cyborgization. Cybernetics is an extension of our logical thought processes, so there is no reason why our thought processes can't increase our computerized tools by interfacing our current age-old communication techniques with our new technology. Speak the future.

An Unmarked Timeline

- If a website presents a timeline of data with small enough x-axis segments, and includes a countdown to the next update, it is "real-time", whether or not the update comes, and whether or not you ever visit the site again.

- If you are in a spaceship traveling faster than light, and someone builds a giant billboard clock placed along your route, which appears to you to be ticking once per second, then you could be standing still.

- I remember a fictional novel, the premise of which is that if a room is re-constructed accurately to a particular time, with every object actually authentic (wink, wink--"authentic") to the time period as it was, then a person was in the room for a certain amount of time (he he--"certain amount") wearing authentic clothing, then they could be transported back in to that period. Call it the Steampunk method of historical augmentation (note: not reality augmentation) 'cept it works. Also of interest: I can re-tell this little story, but even with all the powers of the internet, I cannot sum up the name of the title or the author, because I have no tagline reference point. For all you and I know, I invented this fictional book, and it has never/does not exist.

- There are classes and courses to teach you how to speed-read. The read faster. But there are no lessons on how to read multiple books at one time. I normally read three to four books at once. It is possible to read an infinite amount of books at once. You may read them worse, but you still read them, and possibly no worse than you would have read them one at a time.

- One at a time. Read faster. One at a time.

- Nobody teaches you how to remember things, either. Besides telling you to take notes. In a timeline. And date them. Every day.

- If a Twitter update doesn't fit in the 140, it might go to a blog. You could link to the blog post via Twitter, but no matter what, the thought is cut out of the timeline, forever.


- [follow me on twitter!]

Twitter, Semiotics and Programmatics, and Running out of Characters

I've been reading with interest certain sources regarding the push, from numerous entities, to create conventions of microsyntax, microstructures, and other neologisms for symbolic text in short, small messaging, with Twitter being the ideal service. I have written a bit previously on the semiotics of Twitter and its unique 140-character format, both on the way it shapes common language and symbolic language within its use. (Here; and Here)

The goal it seems, is to develop conventions to increase the use of symbolic language within common language, to increase the way the firm 140-character limit can be used. Here are some pulls from some of the various interested parties out there:

"[O]ur goal is not to turn Twitter into a mere transport layer for machine-readable data, but instead to allow semi-structured data to be mixed fluidly with normal message content." (http://twitterdata.org/)

"Nanoformats try to extend twitter capabilities to give more utility to the tool. Nanoformats try to give more semantic information to the twitter post for better filtering." (http://microformats.org/wiki/microblogging-nanoformats)

"These conventions are intended to be both human- and machine-readable, and our goal here is to: 1. identify conventions in the wild, as users or applications begin to apply it.2. document the semantics of the microsyntax we find or that community members propose, and 3. work toward consensus when alternative and incompatible conventions have been introduced or proposed." (http://microsyntax.pbworks.com/)

Very interesting! Besides the cool buzz words like "nanoformat" and "microsyntax", which are just itching to be propelled into circulation by the NYT's tech section (after which I will hear them again from all the publishing blogs), I am captivated by the goal of sematicization of content for people and machines--equally and fluidly. This is some cyborg shit, here.

The explosion of content in Twitter has created a need for programs and applications to help parse the data, to keep it usable. One can only follow so many people, and with the increase of users and the increase of posts we quickly reach a saturation point. As the Twitterverse of apps taking advance of the simple Twitter API grow, this saturation is compounding upon itself, and Twitter is becoming less of a site, more of a service, and even, little by little, a format.

The Internet has given substance to all sorts of linguistic structures, from the densely complex (at least to the non-adept) programming languages of Flash, Javascript, etc to the slightly more accessible "read-only" HTML, to the linguistically simple email, and even to the real-life-human-interface replicators of video/voice chat. However, each of these seem to find their place on one side of a categorical boundary, which I will call the signification language/programmatic language boundary. I'm about to launch into several of these categorical boundaries—which are somewhat dense distinctions of theoretical concepts, which often overlap as much as they differ. However, because semiotics, or the study of “meaning”, is about these very distinctions, I use them as diagrams or illustrations to try and get closer to a certain sense of meaning which I believe is relevant to the conversation.

Signification language is, simply, all common language and syntax as we know it, being that we are thinking, speaking, understanding humans. This is language built from signifiers, intending to reach the signified, or some ideal variation thereof. It is language which, as we know it, attempts to "mean" something.

Programmatic language, on the other hand, is still built from signifiers, but not intending to relate to the signified directly. Another way to put it is that programmatic language does not have pure content. Programmatic language is built from signifiers which are meant to interact, and thereby perform a linguistic function to content, but this content is separate like a variable, and therefore kept categorically separate from the rest of the signifiers with programmatic meaning. What I'm saying in a round about way, is that this is a programming language. You cannot speak Flash. You can know Flash, and by compiling and understanding it via a "runtime", interact with content in various ways. The content is what is being spoken and understood, but being spoken and understood through Flash.

(This would be as good a time as any to remove any remaining doubt, and admit that I have only a basic understanding of simple programming. However, I believe I understand the concept enough to talk about it, at least from a semiotic standpoint.)

A good example of the programmatic is Pig Latin. It takes a language that does mean something, and converts it programmatically into a new form, which can easily be understood by anyone who can parse the program. Another example is the literary tool known as metaphor--anyone who can parse metaphor knows that it is not meant literally, and therefore he or she is able to easily search the surrounding content for the analogical terms of the program: A is to B as X is to Y. Logic is another sort of program; gold is yellow/all things yellow are not gold—this has meaning because of a way of understanding how it means, not only what it means. And so on. In fact, it might be said that the rules of grammar and syntax for our signification languages are themselves a programmatic component of signification, and this would not be totally incorrect. (And here is the overlap of the categories.) We are not reliant on grammar and syntax to signify, but for those attuned to the programmatic language, it transforms the content and allows it to have a new dimension of meaning: a new how it means. This new dimension, though not always being dogmatically utilitarian, is always related to use. Language is the use of language, whether in the act of signification, programmatic interaction, or wild, totally incomprehensible expression.

There is another concept I'd like to throw into the mix. This is the duality between free-play, and universalization. It is, like the signification/programmatic duality, not exactly mutually exclusive. Free-play is mostly related to signification, because it occurs in the act of signification, along with intent. We gain new signifiers and meanings by a poetic play of the signifers. Universalization works in the opposite direction. By forming a hard and reproducible definition of a concept, word, or action, we can ensure that meaning will not mutate, and anyone who avails themselves of this definitional quality can be reasonably sure the meaning can be established between various people, unified by the universalization of the concept. A certain amount of both of these occurs in all language, but signification can be almost entirely free-play (e.g. “You non-accudinous carpet tacks!”) and programmatics can be nearly pure universalization (e.g. “def:accudinous=0”). However, signification must also contain a great deal of universalization in order to mean anything more complex than simple emotional outburst. And programmatics contains free-play as well (everyone knows programming is quite creative, despite the stereotype). It is the difference between these two ideas that gives them their power--not their exclusivity. To take the Pig Latin example again: one could easily write a program to translate a poem into Pig Latin. It's strictly universal, and accurate. But could one write a program to translate poetry, and maintain its poetic play? Much more difficult. But try employing a poet to translate things into Pig Latin. It might work, but you'd be better off with a program that can streamline the univeralities.

So, the goal of microsyntax (I'm just going to choose one term and stick with it) is to create a certain amount of universalization of programmatics, such that the content of Tweets can function programmatically, to better increase the quality of the content in the form. However, there is also a strict attention to maintain the programmatics within an overall format of free-play signification. This seeks to maintain wide use, ease of human understanding as well as computer parsing, and to maintain the free-play aspects that have made Twitter so popular.

The reason I have bored you with all of these mutated semiotic terms, is so I can explain just how interesting this goal is. I can think of very few attempts to institute such a composite of signification and programmatic language in our linguistic world. There are plenty of overlaps in daily use of language between these concepts, though no defined interaction between them as a goal. There are some abstract examples where the goal is implied. --World of Warcraft, or any other MMORPG, for example, is a combination of a signifying social network with the programmatic skill set of playing an RPG. Of course, the programmatic aspects of the game, once mastered, take a formulaic back seat to the social, conversational aspect of guilds and clans. You can even outsource your gold mining to Asia, these days.

So Twitter is at least somewhat unique in that developers of microsyntax are taking into consideration the fact that the programmatic will be bonded and joined, fluidly, with the signification language of the medium. These are programmatic techniques developed for the user. Basically, we are asking IM users to learn rudimentary DB programming--and expecting them to do so because it is fun and useful. If you don't see this as fairly new and quite interesting development, then you are probably reading the wrong essay.

So what is unique about Twitter that is causing this interesting semiotic effect? What is it about this basically conversationally-derived medium is causing us to inject it with programmatics?

This is what it Twitter does--it takes text messaging, a signification language, and adds some programmatic features. First: a timeline, always (or nearly so) available via API. Second: conjunction, i.e. the “following” function; one can conjoin various accessible timelines into one feed. Third: search; one can search these timelines, within or across following conjunctions.

But these features are not within the signification matrix. The timestamp may be metadata, but the availability of timelines, follow lists, and the search are only available via the service framework and its API. Without the service's presence on the Internet, few people would be using Twitter, because even if you can follow and unfollow via SMS, how are you going to decide who to follow without search features and the ability to abstract the conjunctions by peering at other people's timelines? You might as well be texting your number to ads you read on billboards, trying to find an interesting source of information. With the web app, you can actually use the service as a service, and utilize its programmatics to customize your access to the content.

So how does the programmatic features begin to enter the content? I think it is because of the magic number 140. Because of this limit, the content is already undergoing some programmatic restraints to its ability to signify. Like in an IM or an SMS, abbreviations and acryonyms are used to conserve space, while still transmitting meaning. But this is a closed system; this bit of programmatics continues refer to the content. The interesting thing about Twitter is that the formal elements of the program within the text can reach out of the content, to the program of the service itself, and then back in to the content. In this way, it is completely crossing the barrier between form and content--not just questioning the barrier or breaking it, but crossing it at will. Because the content is restricted to a small quantity, around which the service's program forms messages, we are left with a thousand tight little packages, which we must carefully author. They are easy to make, send, and receive, but we have to be a bit clever to work within and around the 140.

This is a third semiotic category differentiation: the “interior” of content and the “exterior” of its programmatic network. As far as users are concerned, most Internet services are entirely interior. You create a homepage, or a profile, and via the links and connections this central node generates, you spread and travel throughout the network. You can view other profiles, but only via the context of having a similar profile. These other services are entirely interior, because it moves from the center outward into space, and there is no border between the service's content, and its programmatic functions that lead between elements of content. The hyperlink is an extension of the interior, not a link to any exterior. The developer of Facebook or some other service may be able to magically “see” the exterior and manipulate it, as if s/he is viewing the “Matrix”, but the user can only see the content.

Twitter is different, because the service, for all intents and purposes, is not much more complicated than the programmatics the user already must utilize. The programmatic exterior is visible, because it is such an important element of what makes the interior content function for the user. The simplicity of the 140 limit makes the junction between interior and exterior very apparent; because there is so little space for content, the programmatics are relatively simple, and necessarily very available. And because of this, the users willing to creatively explore new programmatics, to venture into this “exterior” with their “interior” content, continuing to bridge the gap, because the functionality is already bridged so often in their understanding of the Twitter language.

Here are some programmatic symbols that have proved themselves useful. @ was first find I believe (shouldn't somebody be writing a history of this?) allowing conjunctions to grow across timelines. Then (the development of which is traced by>http://microsyntax.pbworks.com), # similarly links posts into new timelines, not by user, but by subject. RT is a way of expanding and echoing content throughout new timelines, either across user-based timelines or subject-based. And then the ability of the Twitter service to recognize URLs allows the content to connect back to the rest of the Internet (and accordingly, URL shorteners, picture or other media storage, and anything else the web can hold).

All of these have been user-developed, and picked up and utilized by the wide-spread user base, thus proving their own efficacy. Eventually, the Twitter service has added their own features, recognizing these symbols as their own unique HTML Twitter tags, and giving native function in the form of links to the basic Twitter service, without requiring an app to do so. These symbols change and enhance the content of the Tweets, and allow the user to relate to and access content outside the Tweet itself, as well as interact between various Tweets in a universally understood way.

I know there are other symbols people use out there, but they are not as widespread as these I have just mentioned. This is an interesting facet of the programmatic Twitter symbol. Any symbol can intend any meaning, either through straight signification or programmatic use. But, to really enhance the Twitter medium, it must catch on. This allows it to function in the medium according to the programmatics of the form itself—the timeline, conjunctive networks, and search. If two friends have a secret code, that might provide a certain use between two people. But once that code becomes a language general enough for meaning to be intended to the broad base of users, and similarly, appropriated and used by them, then it is not a cypher, but part of a language itself. It's use will play until it develops a enough of a universal character to be available to just about anyone.

We have seen the Twitter service look out for these things and exploit/develop them, as any good Web 2.0 company should. One might call them “official”, or as much as anything about such a free service is official. Certainly, when Twitter recently changed the service such that @ responses would not appear in the timelines of those not following the respondee, this was about as official a service change as one could imagine.

This introduces another question, similar to this issue of “official” symbol universalization. We might call these questions “social” questions, because to the extent that language only occurs between individuals gathered in a mass, having the unique combination of free-play and universal programmatic meaning associated with content, the dictates of individuals does affect the language's use. Naturally, one cannot make a language illegal, or regulate its usage, but the attempts to do so will have an affect of some sort, even if not the intended effect. Social control of a language may not firmly control its meaning (content) or use (form), but it will change it certainly, on both accounts.

So the second social question(s) I would like to raise is, in addition to the effect of the reliance upon the Twitter service to adopt and officially universalize symbols' programmatic use, to what extent are we willing to base the designs of new symbols, and their open-sourced, community-driven conventions, upon a single service in a closed, controlled entity, just so happening to be a private company? I am not so interested in the intellectual property aspects (for the moment), but to develop a microsyntax for such a service is to develop a language that will be, in the end, limited and proprietary. What other services, forms, and media might the development of a microsyntax affect? To what extent should the microsyntax be limited to Twitter? To what extent will the usefulness of a microsyntax be affected by attempts to universalize or localize the language to a particular service? The size and popularity of Twitter seems to make these moot points, to some extent. Clearly a unique syntax is already developing, whether or not it is the best idea. But is “learning to speak Twitter” simply the best idea? Or should the semiotic lessons we learn from exploring microsyntax better applied to a wider range of media than simply a “glorified text message”?

I do not know the answers to any of these questions yet, nor do I really even have any idea of what sort of symbols should be included. Being the amateur semiotician I am, I have a different position to push.

The notion I would like to add to the discussion is a bit abstract, but I believe it is important. I would like to introject the concept of Authorship, for what good it may do (if any).

Authorship used to be the main source of innovative programmatics in language. Naturally, a main source of significatory content as well—but even more important than the stories themselves, were the way they were told. From the time of Homer, the author has held a significant position in language as the programmer, the prime mover, and the service provider. It was with a certain authority, a certain speaking of the subjective “I” transformed into universalized narrative, that an author was able to shape the use of language. Before the days of authors, perhaps group-memorized verbal legends were the original crowd-source.

And we're heading back there again. I'm not going to dignify Twitter-novels with discussion, but I think it is clear to say that unencumbered access to literature via digital technology is becoming more important to its consumption than the identity of the author. I don't think you can crowd-source the writing of a book per say, but you sure can't get anyone to read a book without a little bit of user-generated marketing.

But even though the author's may be a little disappointed at no longer being well-paid (or paid at all) celebrities, they still haven't lost their power over language. They have a poissance, in the “pushing”, or “forcing” sense of the world, as well as the potential. Perhaps they have lost their way a bit, and forgotten the power one can wield with a bit of forceful word-smushing (certainly folks have died for it in the past), but the capacity is still there. Authorship is a firm hand around the pen, or fingers on the keys.

I don't think this bit of figurative nostalgia is unrelated. One doesn't set up a new syntax by writing a white-paper or a blog essay—one does it by going out there and using the syntax. Proposing something is never enough; one has to use it with force, and let the force of the symbols become self-evident. If it is powerful, than it shall be. Language has developed, since the age of authors and perhaps even before, via loud shouts, firmly intended phrases, and elloquent incantations alike. We know there is hate speech, and are wary of its power. What about language with the power to build, or unite? Or simply to communicate with lightening speed—a linguistic Internet in symbols and syntax alone. I was fascinated by Dune as a kid—the idea that the Atriedes had their own battle language, a secret language only used in matters of life and death, bowled me over. No, Twitter is not a battle language. But it is some sort of new language. Perhaps, an Internet Language.

But this is the problem with the Twitter service: it is ultimately reductive, in signification and programmatics. It's that damn 140 character limit—both the source of its semiotic innovation and all of its troubles. By being one of the first popular services to define both an inside and an outside to its content (all others that think of themselves as ever-growing blobs come to look like them too), it chose too small of a box. We need more from our Internet content than 140 characters can ever provide. Therefore the wild expansion is occurring on the outside, and the Twitterverse is becoming a horribly mutated and desolate place.

The truth is, interactions with ulterior apps via programmatics and the API are near worthless. Sure, you can develop some good client apps for writing posts, keeping track of multiple timelines, and searching. But micropayments? GTD lists? Real threaded messages and chats? Media sharing? These are all hopelessly wishful thinking. Just because the service is popular does not mean you can convince everybody, or even a critical mass, to accomplish all their Internet uses through a 140-character window. All of these things exist in “large form” in their own separate interiors, and to try and shrink them into the syntax of Twitter is to squish them too much, and fill up that little 140-character box to the breaking point. This is not to say we have uncovered all that Twitter has to offer—but it is to say that most of the invention is horribly un-programmatically authored.

Twitter's power lies in its communication—in its content, rather than shoving content programmatically through an overloaded API. It delivers small, concise messages, and allows a certain amount of programmatic networking to access this content, in a brilliantly small and simple package. As authors, this is the avenue to develop for Twitter. To push Twitter and see what we can do with its programmatic content, not IPO-in-the-sky payday concepts.

But microsyntax need not begin and end with Twitter. What if we took the approach of the equally accessible interior/exterior, the content/programmatics approach we have found in Twitter, and applied it to other services, or created new services around this semiotic utility? What if rather than force all the exterior into a too-small 140-character interior, we developed an interior simple enough, say like plain text, and developed microsyntax to control the programmatic aspects of the access of this plain text in ways simple enough for any user to wield? What if a service was created not unlike email, that would route plain text on the basis of its plain text? What microsyntax could be added to email systems, for example? What about openly-readable, tagged, searchable email? Why not? Why are wikis constrained to web servers, like shadow-plays of web activity? Why aren't they linked via opt-in, streaming timeline conjunctions? Rather than storing an edit history, a wiki could be the timeline itself, constantly in atemporal motion rather than accumulating on a server. Anybody opting-in would be simultaneously reading and forming the wiki with their programmatically-intended text updates.

Twitter has also opened up the door. It has linked the programmatic with content in a way that appeals to millions of people, and could be argued to have provided real use to these same millions. Now that we, as authors wielding such methods, can see what it is doing to the usefulness of language, we have a new angle in which to push language. What other sorts of programmatic changes can we make to our content, both on Twitter, and in the rest of our linguistic world? Could we develop a microsyntax for every day speech? Certain microsyntax elements leak into speech already. What about long-form Internet writing? What symbols would improve its function, and what html tags would provide better access both inside and outside the text? What should be universalized, and what should get more free-play? Should we develop a taxonomy of tags? A symbol to denote obscure metaphor? The possibilities, and the potential, are near endless.

A Long Cough Ending in Silence

Prepare yourself for the mostly timely, Internet-syndication-ready post you've ever read.

TWITTER-H1N1-SOCIALWEB-TECHOBAMAMERICA-2.0-POSTINGLY!!!!

You should have already linkbacked this post. You should have already favorited, commented, Delicious'ed, and StumbleUpon'ed this post.

It absolutely kills me that StumbleUponed is now a legitimate verb.

This is also going to be one of those long, winding posts of mine, wherein I grab you by the hand, and take you through a winding, decaying carcass of a strip mall set up as some post-apocalyptic museum in homage of a dead country-western band, recently sainted by the local zombie cult.

By this, I clearly mean a cavernous shell of hyperlinks, which you will no doubt avoid, because who knows how long they have been sitting out and eww, I mean government document PDFs? You actually want me to read that?

But do not fear; just like those other times past, I also have a destination. A point, in which you will finally exit into that harsh, glaring desert sun, wondering if the wind-stripped carcasses of animals long extinct are actually bleaching white in the sun, or if it is your previous notions and categories now lying in the dust, rib cages bare, exposed to the truth. That is, you would feel that extraordinary realization, if you hadn't bolted for the emergency exit a third of the way through, totally unbeknownst to me. Where do they keep going? Are they spontaneously combusting in the face of pure, restrained gnosis? Or are they cowering in some corner, reduced to an archaic animal state by the depth of that psychic well? (It's either Lawnmower Man or Altered States with me, all the time, isn't it?)

Either way--enough with the introductions. Pay attention, jerks. I've got about eight tabs open in my browser, and I swear to god, they ain't going to re-tweet themselves.


Well, we've already made a big stink about the fact that the media was about eighteen hours behind the H1N1 news. Major media victory for Wikipedia and Twitter, and no one is really surprised. The media it seems, has sort of grimly taken defeat, even ignoring this opportunity for a major Media x.x, Twitter-caught-not-wearing-panties story, instead moving on to other things. Kind of like the bully who finally stops picking on the little kid who all of a sudden has a lot of friends and doesn't even quite remember the bully's name anyway, because "This sucks, and I'm going to go light bugs on fire."

The Government, interestingly enough, has been on the Twitter side of winning, it seems. Maybe they are that skinny kid, finally figured out that a sense of humor really impresses everybody a lot more than stomping people and throwing their shoes on the roof. The CDC and other gov't organizations have refrained from big media appearances, sound bites, and Good Morning America tutorials on how to duct tape your family's orifices closed. They played the hand close to the chest, releasing a little bit of information, not confirming or denying a whole lot, and then mildly suggesting "to check our new, H1N1-ready web site for updates." This sort of thing kills the media. What good is attending a press conference if all the info is a RT away from everyone knowing it anyway? They can't even be the primary link anymore! Pandemicflu.gov doesn't sell any advertising! Fuck!

Everyone and their Internet-Marketer-Pyramid-Schemer is up to date on the dead media story. However, to some crazy asshole who is fascinated by government bureaucracy, there is something even more pungent about this story. A government person saying, "yeah, just check our websites for updates..." What?!?! Two years ago, this would be a punch in the face. A punch in the face, and then a kick in the groin, spit in the face, and the delivery of one of Sean Connery's lines from The Rock.

Three or so years ago I was working for a non-profit hosting a conference about disasters and global warming. We were researching people to invite as speakers, and needed to have some more people from the government come out. Getting referred to a website for contact information was the complete brush off. First of all, there wasn't any contact information: maybe just an assistant's email, a operator's phone number, or a comment form. Second, there wasn't even any real websites: instead, there were circuitous paths of links, taking you from within agency to inter-agency, to liason, to office of the under-secretary. Site map? Ha! The only thing more irritating was trying to navigate a school of higher education's website.

Case-in-point: I use this as my go-to example of Bush era bureaucracy. I was trying to find someone worth inviting from the Department of Homeland Security. That website was totally ridiculous. I managed to find the re-organization flow charts, (you might remember after Katrina, DHS was totally re-organized to make it "better") hoping that it was only because of the reorganization that I couldn't manage to hit upon a single page listing the mailing address of anyone.

Here is a flow chart from 2004 (It's on the 3rd page. Note how two pages of instructions are required for this flow chart).

Now, here is a chart from 2008, after the re-organization. Note the first chart of DHS is followed by an additional 24!!! charts, detailing each component. Much simpler, no?

But it actually is far more complex than that. If you read the entire history of DHS organization, you will find out that the Katrina re-organization was actually the fourth re-organization, or perhaps three and a half, stemming from the legislation planned for the third reorganization, but ending up different. The second chart I listed is the current state of affairs at DHS. All in all, DHS has gone through approximately EIGHT re-organizations in it's six year history from 2002 to Spring 2008--roughly a re-organization every six months or so, except for an unusual period of stability in 2004. But don't take my word for it (35-page history of a seven-year old bureau, including twelve unique pages of historical charts).

And one wonders how DHS lost $15B in contracted money in six years...

Despite the neo-con Cheney politics, and the fear-mongering control of the country with the Patriot Act, and other various criminal and Fascist acts during those eight years, I hope the legacy Bush becomes historically known for is a brilliant ability to gut a government with a mixture of control and laisse-faire policies. This sort of bureaucracy is a completely new addition to the history of totalitarianism. On one hand, spying (both internal and external), intimidiation, fear-mongering, and torture become common-place. On the other hand, certain budgets are sliced to bits, while other agencies are given so much money and manpower they can't do anything but eat themselves, like a cancer. It's diabolical, really. I'm reminded of certain parts of Catch-22: Lt. Scheisskopf and his parades--then the announcement that all parades will be postponed, which he throws himself into effort of announcing, as much as he had formerly poured effort into the parades. Remember, in the end of the book, it's Scheisskopf that becomes the commanding general. If like any other runaway leader, Bush had had about twenty years behind the wheel, we would be cooking our neighbors in the rubble.

But hey, things are different now, right? Change done happened, and he fixed the websites! DHS hasn't re-organized since March 2008! The people won!

Wait a minute--what's this? Swine flu? Shit.

No matter, I'll just check my Twitter. See how hip this government is? CDC has a Twitter account, informing me of emergency information as it happens. All I have to do is opt-in, and bing! Updates to my mobile, or wherever. Technology is awesome!

Let's see who else @CDCemergency is following. Maybe I'll get some other good government info while I'm at it, WebTwoOhing it up. Whoa. Following 74. Looks like WHO, the White House, a dozen other specialty government crisis units, about nine FEMA regions, and every major metro Red Cross has a Twitter account too. That's a lot of Emergency Tweets.

There's got to be a better way. I know! I'll follow @CDC_eHealth: providing me all the latest opportunities, so I can connect with only the real important ones. That's the ticket. Let's see, they're directing me to their very own Social Media site! Amazing! Obama! Social Media government: this country is making leaps and bounds!

But... whoa.

Five CDC widgets?

Website badges with scrolling updates?

A CDC YouTube Channel?

CDC Podcasts?

RSS feed?

A CDC Flickr site?

A CDC Facebook page?

A CDC MySpace page?

CDC eCards?!?!?!?

What, no Match.com profile? I'm not kidding. Those all really exist.

What is the deal? I demand a flow chart to determine which one of these sources is updated first! Where is the transperency in this Web 2.0 re-organization?

I know information sets us free, but this is getting ridiculous. I think technology is great like everybody else--but this reminds me of a keynote speech at SXSWi I've haven't read.

All kidding and paranoia about incipient governmental bureaucracy aside (the two naturally go hand in hand), we are discussing health here. Health, to some people, is a very important issue. In fact, as I recently mentioned, it is one of those just ever-so-volatile human issues that can leap in to flames of paranoia at the slightest spark. Something about the integrity of the body just drives people wild, builds them into mobs, and makes them ready to sacrifice themselves and their neighbors for their own safety. Terry Jones talks about it a bit here. Totally history, folks. True.

Health is also one of those knobs by which governments in power tweak the biomass of humanity, turning up the flame when necessary, and diffusing it at other times. When will a people accept a curfew, or refuse to cross a line, no matter what? When you call it a "quarantine". Information about health is a very dangerous game to play with--an outbreak is one of those Foucauldian moments when the juridico-discursive, the pathologico-institutional complex, and the sexual biologico-paranoia of the mass just lines up perfectly. It's a post-structuralist textbook example, here.

But here, let's ask Foucault himself. (Bear in mind he is literally discussing madness, here, but I think the parallel is obvious.)

"All those forms of unreason which had replaced leprosy in the geography of evil, and which had been banished into the remotest social distance, now became a visible leprosy and offered their running sores to the promiscuity of men. Unreason was once more present; but marked now by an imaginary stigma of disease, which added its powers of terror.
"Thus it is the realm of the fantastic and not within the rigor of medical thought that unreason joins illness and draws closer to it. Long before the problem of discovering to what degree the unreasonable is pathological was formulated, there had formed, in the space of confinement and by the alchemy peculiar to it, a melange combining the dread of unreason and the old specters of disease. From a great distance, the old confusions about leprosy functioned once again; and it is the vigor of these fantastic themes which was the first agent of synthesis between the world of unreason and the medical universe. They first communicated through the hallucinations of fear, combining the infernal mixtures of "corruption" and "taint". It is important, perhaps decisive for the place madness was to occupy in modern culture, that homo medicus was not called into the world of confinement as an arbiter, to divide what was crime from what was madness, what was evil from what was illness, but rather as a guardian, to protect others from the vague danger that exuded through the walls of confinement." (205 in my Vintage edition).

If you're unfamiliar with Madness and Civilization, the point Foucault is making here is that in the 18th century there was a unification conducted with illness and "unreason", a new concept of mental defect growing along with the age of reason. This "madness" was also made synonymous with prisons, and the spirit that caused people to deport lepers made them wish to imprison the mad. Doctors, therefore, become unique personas in that they are not called upon simply to diagnose or treat the insane, but to keep them away from society.

The theme is not so unfamiliar to us. In an age of remarkable health breakthroughs, American society has sanitized certain health problems. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and even AIDS are now Lifestyle problems--not disease. If you die of one of these things it was merely a lapse of your willpower, just as you probably should have lost that weight after college, but you didn't. If it was an infection, it was probably somebody else's fault--the doctor, the hospital, or the farmer who shat on your strawberries.

Disease happens in the third world now. Organic, health-conscious parents don't innoculate their children anymore--instead they give money to polio charities, fighting disease somewhere else. They send malaria nets to Africa, or failing that, just adopt the kids back here. Sickness, for us, is a lifestyle problem (sorry guys, can't go out drinking tonight, I've got a cold) or a foreign, developing issue. (Hey, water issues are real important in sick countries where they don't have the bold look of Kohler!)

So when that developing nation so close to home develops a new strain of flu, it is a foreign problem. More than that: it is a dirty problem. It is swine flu, a biblical association with that dirty, most guilty food-choice we have, despite the fact it is also part bird flu and part good-old-fashioned human flu. The Israelis may have been the only ones to say it, (god-bless 'em!) but the connotation was obvious. It is south-of-the-border-disease, the land of eating-the-wrong-parts-of-the-animal. Isn't that where all those tomatoes came from???

So what do the people do? Call the doctors. No, they aren't calling them to get better hand washing instructions--something that could actually save them, just like it always has from the flu--they are asking them for protection. Close the borders, deport them, where is it now, where is it NOW, is it NEAR ME oh god but I must KNOW instantly, in real time!

Despite the fact that this is the same lifestyle sickness, more or less, that keeps countless young singles from going out on a perfectly good weekend night during the winter months, and also regularly kills 36,000 people a year. It is a pandemic. Somebody wake up the media and let them know.

My point, of course, is not to say that a new flu pandemic is not important to fight, track, and limit in spread. These things are still important, just like they always are with germs. And what is still the best tactic to fight it? Revoking Green Cards? Keeping Twitter refreshing every 30 seconds? No! Wash your goddamn hands!

We have, in this country, a mental imbalance: a disease. We have a pathological image of our bodies. We do not understand them, we fear them, and we seek to control them. Our bodies are our disease, which we seek to forget, to ostracize, and to reduce, hiring countless doctors to keep our bodies' functions limited and out of sight.

With the constantly expanding horizon of our consciousnesses, we seek to control our bodies. Our vast information networks are kept humming, diagnosing us via Web MD, perpetuating a lifestyle of paranoiac-pathologization. Our government keeps unfolding in a vast fractal pit of total information awareness, swallowing meaning into great vacuums of data.

The diagnosis and the cure. The diagnosis is the unknown, the foreign. The cure is control, research, and constant recitation of the litanies of the social democracy. The diagnosis is diet and exercise, the cure is going to the doctor. The diagnosis and the cure... what about good old protein, and amino acids? A little exercise? Those are important? Quick, prescribe me some! Pills with proper doses, and rotating regiments of calculated maximum heart rates. I can lifestyle my way out of this! I can spend enough money to make it happen!

These regimes are building up around us, a bureaucracy of reason walling us in as the departments of our ego re-organize, and re-organize again, knowing eventually it will find that proper pattern to guarantee Body Security. If we can't do it with weapons, we can do it with information. If we can't do it with information, we'll do it with meta-information. Organize our thoughts, our approach, our strategy, and try again. Hypothesize, plan, outline, and try again. Metastasizing units of thought, processing, processing, processing, spitting out ideas, sound bites, mnemonics, top ten lists, and headlines. An immune system, attacking its own organs, because it's programming told it to.

Where is the flesh, in all of this? Where are the running noses, the dripping eyes, the clean, clear flows of mucus bleeding our vessels and cavities off, flushing them clean with the secretions made for that very purpose? They've been stopped up, dammed, and cut off at the source with the same stimulants and steroids that keep us achieving, moving forward, and purifying the lifestyle.

Where is the good, clean fat cells? The stores of energy, our bodies own batteries, tucked away into the crevices of our skeletons like the granaries of a city grown fat on its success and its peace. Our aesthetic has become one of famine, because our neurotic minds can't handle the body weighing it down. We run on fumes, because the sloshing of fuel makes us quiver in fear at the sound of our insides.

Where is the muscle? The smooth, knitted fibers, trained not only for efficiency but for adaptability by constant use, the dynamic infrastructure of daily work, the conversion of the body into a tool of the trade of living, rather than into an infomercial exercise device itself.

In 2006, the greatest cause of stopped MTA trains due to sickness were because of people passing out from not eating.

The ability not to fart or urinate in front of a lover is the subject of modern television drama.

We have iPhone apps for counting calories, but our doctors refuse to put our medical records online.

We wear masks against the flu, but teenagers can't figure out condoms.


It's the horrible truth of the world, really. I don't expect it to change. As a species, we are of a certain nature that plunges toward the future, shedding flaming members of our composite humanity into the wind like particles of smoke. Only it massive, gushing clouds are they even really visible.

This is the point at which I regretfully break off, cutting you loose. Unfortunately, nothing so poignant as a desert or a carcass--instead, merely the beginning of another long hallway of Internet, stretching out in front of you.

But if you want a little souvenir of truth to take with you, I guess all there is to say is that any blog post that's going to tell you anything uncomfortably true is probably going to start ironically, and end tragically.

get well soon human,

Adam

We Bring You an Important Interruption:

Swine Flu, otherwise known as Influenza A H1N1.

Not to be alarmist, but even if you are not normally interested in these sorts of semi-apocalyptic world events, you may want to pay attention, at least until there is some real idea of how big this is going to spread. Unfortunately, because of the way rumors spread about these sorts of things, and the really, truly unbelievable USELESSNESS of the major media on this issue, we probably won't know what's really happening until its over, and by that time it will be too late for the people who will be the casualties.

The media is providing this, generally, as the story:

"Some people, we don't really know how many, are like, pig-sick, or something. California, Kansas, Texas, New York, Mexico. Maybe some other places? Some disease researcher types think it might be serious."

Thanks.

Twitter and Wikipedia, on the other hand, are much better, but still not the magic media bullet. @timoreilly passed on this Google map of current outbreaks. This is not really that informative, but contextualizes the current status well.

He also passed on this posting, by a former flu researcher, Terry Jones, that while not providing that much in the way of new, breaking information, cuts away A WHOLE LOT of the bullshit.

As far as the exact, current state of things, (not including the late-breaking news reports that are more "late" than anything else, not to mention conflictual) I've found the often-updating Wikipedia page about the current outbreak to be the best summation, because it lists all the info on one page, with sources.

Terry Jones is also Twittering at @terrycojones. The current Twitter tags for the epidemic seem to be #H1N1 (which in itself is much more factual information than any media report) and #swineflu.

Here are some of the most important facts about epidemics in general, pulled from Terry Jones' blog posting, which I feel deserve repeating:

"The current virus is already known to be resistant to both amantadine and rimantadine, though oseltamivir is still effective."

"If you ask virologists what the probability is that there will be another pandemic, they’ll tell you it’s 1.0. It’s just a matter of time until it happens. it’s like a non-zero probability state in a Markov process.When it does happen, what you do in the first phase is critically important."

"The current WHO standard influenza test kit is not very useful in identifying this strain. They have issued instructions warning against false negatives."

"The acting-director of the CDC has already said: “There are things that we see that suggest that containment is not very likely.” That is a remarkably candid statement. I think it’s very clear that the cat is out of the bag. The question is how bad is it going to be. That’s impossible to tell right now, because we do not know what the virus will look like in the future, after it has had time to mutate and adapt inside humans.:

"The new virus has been popping up in various places in the US in the last days. I expect it will go global in the next couple of days, maximum."

"Instead of peaks in just the very young and the very old, there was a W shape, with a huge number of young and healthy people who would not normally die from influenza. There are various conjectures as to the cause of this. The current virus is also killing young and healthy adults."

"The social breakdown in a pandemic is extraordinary."

"History dictates that you should probably not believe anything any politician says about pandemic influenza. There has been a strong tendency to downplay risks. All sorts of factors are at work in communicating with the public. You can be sure that everything officially said by the WHO or CDC has been very carefully vetted and considered. There’s no particular reason to believe anything else you hear, either :-)" [emphasis mine]

"In conclusion, I’d say that the thing is largely out of our hands for the time being. We’re going to have to wait and see what happens, and make our best guesses along the way."


Other things:

Facemasks don't prevent viruses. But, they do prevent spittle, fluids, and that sort of thing, which transmit viruses.

While I implicitly do not trust governments or leaders, I do trust the CDC and the WHO. They are run by scientists, by and large. If the CDC or the WHO approves a vaccine or a certain procedure, I would take it/follow it. I've done a little bit of reading about the spread of outbreaks, and it is most often that one person who slips past quarantine spreads the virus to a new location. You may hate needles, or believe some conspiracy about vaccines, but in taking the risk upon yourself by refusing treatment, you are putting the entire population you may contact at risk. Sorry--I know, but its how biology works. Put the species before yourself, this one time.

However, that being said, I do not trust FEMA in the slightest. Not that we are at that point--but just to juxtapose, while CDC is run by scientists and doctors, FEMA is run by politicians and Blackwater types, who would totally doom a portion (especially an "undesirable" portion) of the population to save themselves. Or at least, they would have their heads so far up their gold-bricking grafting asses as to not know hand sanitizer from napalm. I don't know how much has changed since the previous administration, but if that agency is anything like what it was in 2005-7, I would dodge those criminals. CDC are the folks who are going to save our asses, whereas FEMA are the ones hoarding virgins in the Dr. Strangelove mine-shaft bunkers. The really sad part about some conspiracy theories is that some are true. Remember I said that.

Okay--enough scaremongering for now. Really though: just pay attention, listen up, and don't believe rumors unless you get the facts from someone trustworthy. In lieu of that, cover your mouth, and wash your damn hands.

@mcsweeney's

Sigh....

McSweeney's did a feature making fun of Twitter.

The thing that really pisses me off about it is that it was so incredibly obvious they were going to do so; I should have posted something myself about "OMG, can't you just imagine how weak the McSweeney's piece about Twitter is going to be, once they finally get around do it?" And then I could have lovingly patted myself on the back once they did.

Anyway.

I have a lot of gripes with McSweeney's, many of which I admit are formed directly in the jealousy centers of my ego. But some are actually valid, and perhaps interesting to others. Such as the fact that they take obvious material and somehow twist it into the most obvious ironic hipster-esque literature-simple overhand knot.

Take this piece, which I might have read on April 1 in the "Internet Age" section of the Des Moines Register, or some such place.

Here is a list of the pop culture references in the piece:

Lost
iPhones
Lolcats
Huffington Post
Perez Hilton
Guitar Hero
Facebook
Kindle
Segway
"I can has ____"

Here are the list of classic writer's mentioned in the piece, so we could know it was actually ironic:

Hemingway
Stein
Pynchon
Sontag
The latin name of a tree frog?

Conclusions draw about Twitter:

You write shorter
You may say things that are not true
You ignore real people while you Twitter
You're spelling is probably bad or non-existent
You hypelink stupid pictures

Wow. Very good. These comparisons and conclusions made a hilarous point that wasn't entirely obvious.

The part of this that is really depressing is, these people have a well-reknowned print journal, and what they choose to print are stupid jokes fit only for late night TV, which have already been told in 140 characters or less, about a thousand times by anyone who knows what Twitter is. This does not bode well for us.

I will give credit to the end of the piece, which was shaped in the form of an "Internet Age Syllabus". They marked the grade gamut as from "A" to "A----". Now, a send-up of the decline of our education system, that's funny!

Of 140-character-matology

So, yeah: there was this thing in Texas, and well:

TWITTER

That pretty much covers it. Maybe it's alive, maybe it's dead; but you can be effin' sure that it's Twitter.

I've been conducting my own Twitter experiment for a little over four months now and I've learned a lot of things (and yes, SOMEWHERE on this page is the hidden link that will let you share in the joy of my micro-blogged arteries).

The foremost point: like just about everyone else who has tried it, I like it. After getting a good group of people to subscribe to, the feed is easy and addictive to read. I'm not sure if folks enjoy my posting or not (I have at least 15 or so non-spam followers) but I imagine the readership is somewhat like this blog--a bit random, perhaps sparse, and yet strangely, half-dedicated at the same time. Posting is fun, easy, and provides opportunity for a bit of silly, 140-character word play.

I already expounded upon some of the semiotic ramifications of a 140-character communication medium, so I won't repeat that here. Also, just about anyone who knows anything about the Internet, and who likes to tell you what they know about the Internet, will tell you how important Twitter is to the Internet. So, I think I'll leave that one well enough alone too.

But here's something you might not have heard: there are many, many people who have no idea what Twitter is.

These are people who blog. These are people who can find the best gay club in a new city with Google and a quick twitch of the wrist (well, at least one of them can). And these are people in the publishing industry. At a dinner party a few weeks ago, I off-handedly mentioned Twitter, and this group of six mid-twenty year-old's did not know what I was talking about. Half said, "what's a Twitter?" and the other half said, "so what is that, anyway?"

I have no reason to thinking poorly of these people; after all, at the time I was only three months ahead of them in the Twitter-verse. But this is something I believe many 'Net-Theorists are not fully-recognizing: this revolution in communication going on is only among a vanguard.

So, one might argue, has every new chapter in this new internet saga. Throughout the last twenty years, the Internet has met the different members of the human race one by one, and in different times and places. Some have yet to make its acquaintance. And every single one came into the fold at a different stage in the game.

I'm not a technology guru. I understand the technology behind the Internet and its means of transmission and its interfaces only marginally better than the average person, and certainly not well enough to operate any of them as anything more than a user (though I am currently enrolled in the Computer Programming course at Wikiuniversity!)

But what I do understand, and actually have some professional and theoretical training in regards to, is methods of communication, language, and human psychology. I am seeing something occur here--and although you may have heard this about 100 times in the past year (and 20 of them since SXSW), I believe it is true: this is something that has never happened before.

One can talk about the digital revolution through any number of metaphors relating to other advances in information technology in the past several millennia. I'm not going to. I'd rather talk about what we are doing now.

And this is it: we are conflating our language with our method of transmission. In other words (duck your head while the theory comes past), we have seized our means of communication by creating a productive unity between the product (meaning/symbol) and the production (expression/transmission).

Or rather, we are seizing it. Not all have done so, and those who have begun are not nearly finished, even if there was such a final state.

Let me say it over again, but simpler, because I really think this is an important point.

The method of digital production (the networked computers and communication lines we commonly refer to as the Internet) has dropped the cost of producing, distributing, and consuming information to practically nothing. Furthermore, along with the spread of end-user information such as news and media, comes the spread of the knowledge of how to manipulate, and further seize and shape the technology of digital production. I can learn programming on the Internet for free (or at least in theory--as I have yet to actually do so). A real example: a child of nine in Southeast Asia can become a certified Help Desk technician. Another example: a person using the Internet can invent, create, and promote their own communication client, with little-to-no actual investment of materials used, other than the computer they already had.

Open-source, APIs, and so forth. But here is the other interesting part: through word of mouth, networking, and good old trial and error, one Internet user's programming project becomes an Internet start-up. This start-up becomes a business. This business project changes the way the entire world communicates. One does not change the relations of production by oneself, but does so in concert with a dedicated and involved group: a network. Crazy, no?

None of this is news, really. But it's still pretty awe inspiring when you step back and look at it. Back in the old days, inventors used to die broke, sick, and alone. They were persecuted by the Church, and the children in the village would hurl fruit at them when they would step outside to rake the gravel outside their hut. These days all you have to do is read a lot, practice, and then you sell your craft project to VC, move to California, and write your own biography. Crazy!

Here's what's really crazy: the pace has sped up for the users as well. They are part of the network; they are both the means of production as well as party to the relations of production, and they work uncontrolled by any boss. Therefore, mass adoption is only possible when the masses themselves undergo a revolution in production. But even though a critical mass may be joining a particular revolution in production, they are leaving people behind. And this is totally okay, but strange, in the face of the pace of technology. Most people don't even know how Twitter works, let alone why its good. But now, simply knowing what Twitter is, and updating your status isn't enough. You have to use a good client, with search capacities, TwitPic, and a URL-shrinker all combined. You have to Trend. And you can't even just Trend! This past weekend one had to construct crazy Boolean search constraints just to find out where the tacos where at. Just wait until you have to write your own App on the fly at an event to handle the ever evolving and expanding data stream pouring out of the API.

Try explaining #SXSW to someone who doesn't use Twitter, but only uses Facebook. It barely makes sense to someone who hasn't shifted their means of production along with the revolution in the network. It's not enough to know how to use the Internet--you have to own the interface. Communication is not a matter of being about to read, or even operating a card catalog. Ever try to explain how to Google something to a person unfamiliar with a search engine? You have to be a skilled operator of the means of communication to be able to communicate. Pretty soon you might have to have a Library Science degree just to figure out what you're missing.

This is not simply literacy. This is an ability to critically think on the fly--to creatively craft information and symbols, and interpret, in a constant productive and consumptive process. The old Rhetoric and Speech classes of yesteryear will be replaced with Reg. Ex. and Javascript.

I'm looking at my browser window right now. Firefox. I have five tabs open. One is my iGoogle page, with news, RSS Reader, Twitter, and Email widgets all included. I'm glad I can fit them all into one page. I have my blog edit screen open, two half-read articles, and another blog post open for reference. I have a full bookmark bar at the top, but I hardly use these anymore. I have Javascripts for Google Notebook to handle my evolving collection of links and notes. I have Javascript button to subscribe to an RSS feed, and a button to post a page to my Shared Item page (part of Google Reader). I also have a link to my off-line TiddlyWiki, where I am compiling notes for a writing project. I play mp3s through FoxyTunes, and I have just installed Ubiquity, so I can jump to certain tasks like Twitter or Email with a hotkey and a typed command.

And with this personalized Interface, I am barely keeping up! Several of my RSS feeds are devoted to sources to keep me abreast of the new formats and apps reaching the market. I have to know what's going on, just to maintain the struggle to know what's going on!

This concept, the ongoing technological revolution in means and relations of production, is whispering to me. It is whispering to me about a future for the Internet (cough and head for the exits, its prophet-brain-dump time!):

[starry-eyed, swirly, white-out fantasy bells...]

Twitter will meet Ubiquity or another semantic web program half-way. Using some bastardization of Javascript, mutated by downloaded user-customized commands and uniquely-hacked libraries, Internet users will message, email, search, read, and archive data using these complex 140-character commands. Most of the text sent back and forth between users will not resemble written speech--it will be a hybrid of scripts and links, slangs and references. There will be pockets of written text at fixed URLs--the remnants of today's blogs and wikis. Everything will be accessible with XML or some derivative (though probably not fully "semanticized"), so it can be searched, compiled, subscribed, shared, and archived via the TwitScripts. "Privacy", in terms of personal data, will break down as a concept. You will not have a password--you will have a registered device. You will log on to a single user-name (perhaps a seperate for business) and launch your TwitScripts from an open and readable timeline. The data must flow...

[...trauma-inducing crash back to reality.]

But this is only one possible future, for certain users who are adept and interested enough to learn TwitScript. For those who are not interested in this particular technological revolution, other interfaces will become popular. For instance, there is also the MySpace future.

MySpace is AOL. There--I said it. It is a portal to media content. To be fair, the user-generated element of MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook are much more interesting (due to their variously-shifting standards of user-control) than AOL's portal ever was. But the goal is the same--a controlled (and heavily advertised) environment in which users can log on and roam about, never having to learn anything new or create an interface from scratch. Profiles, skins, centralized app access--it's the trading card game of the web.

But this appeals to certain people--especially young people. It is easy, and the community is ready-made. Sign on, and join your school first. Then, form other groups from that. This will be the media-tized Internet of the future. Note: not the future of Internet media, but the future of the Internet as a media channel. Imagine--Microsoft buys MySpace or Facebook, make a few connections and software upgrades, and all of sudden the Xbox is the WebTV kids actually want. For people who are not interested in learning the means of distribution, these media portals are the perfect product.

And then there is the regular old Internet as well. I think of a guy I know at work--he loves Craigslist. He struggles with Mapquest, but is on Craigslist almost every day, looking for deals. He has that one interface down, but doesn't have a need to learn anything else. There are people who are the same with eBay, or their favorite news/discussion sites. Or even just Google--find my movie times, and I'm out. The capacity of the user to learn the means of communication dictates how far he or she will choose to go, and more importantly, how far the technology will go with them.

My TwitScript conception of the future (for the record, this term is, along with the rest of this blog, under CC license as of now [is he joking? or serious?]) is the direction in which I imagine those pushing the limits of the technology will take it. To deal with the increasing amount of information available in protean distribution formats, we will need to become literate in the mechanics of information distribution--this includes text mark-up languages, browser mechanics, and the new consumer info "packet": the Tweet (more about the power of the 140-character set in that earlier post I alluded to). The line between the cutting edge users and the programmers will diminish, just because of the rapidity of the pace. The designers will be the beta testers, the early adopters, and the constituency. They will be the only one's that matter, from the Twitter-verse's perspective. Think about it: when you are Twittering, what else really matters? You are communicating with other users, for other users.

Here is a post by Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) for a day or so ago:

RT @elisabethrobson: Interesting stats from the iPhone 3.0 preview yesterday: (via @iphoneschool) http://cli.gs/nL1yJ5 #iphone

Look how far we are already! Only 85 characters of this are actually readable text! The rest are hyperlinks, short-hand, tags, and citations. And in fact, because it is a Re-Tweet, none of it is his original words. This is an index; it points in a direction through the network, distributing information even though substantially, it itself says almost nothing. And it doesn't need to, because by utilizing the method of internet indication (the hyperlink) Tim is giving us more information than 140 characters ever could. He is linking us into the network, and insinuating us into a pattern of unlimited knowledge in a yet reasonable and understandable gesture.

I promised that I actually had some theory for you regarding semiotics and psychology, or other such nonsense. If you are not interested in such things, feel free to skip out now, taking the conclusion: Twitter is the beginning of a revolution in the means of communication, to a conflation of content and expression. But, for those who read my Marx-between-the-lines, and desire more, here is a deliciously (or perhaps annoyingly, depending on your preferences) difficult description:

The signifier, as the point of expression for meaning (the signified), has been receiving an altogether privileged place in our understanding of language. Whether it be the Holy Word, the unattainable signifier of Lacan, or even the juridico-discursive power of the "I" point in modern testimony, the moment and form of expression (I think therefore...) is seen to be the cutting-edge of the language tool.

While this signifier is hardly diminishing in its psychological position (consciousness demands a position for the "I"), our evolving technology of expression is reducing its sacred position over the signifier/signified duality. The psyche, as a technological realm of semiotic expression, is not in itself shifting; but in our current relations of production, in which our minds are interfacing with digital networks, we are ironically becoming "unwired" from our binary (the basic two digits) understanding of our own communication. We are not just signifying now, we are manipulating the way we signify as part of the signification.

The role of the author is shifting. The power of attribution to a fixed, historical "I" is less important than the information to be understood. Understanding, and hence, expression, is less reliant on the signifier as a perfect concept of content production. Misspellings are common, and ignored. If anyone is asked, of course the signifier still plays a role, but as the signifer grows in scope to encompass not only the privileged identity between word and speaker, but also between a choice in language, distribution network, semantics, time, and distribution, the signifier is becoming more meaningful as a material object. We are bringing the signifier back down to earth, muddying it with the effluviance of the signified phenomena, and enacting a phenomenological semiotic, rather than a formal (Platonic, Hegelian, etc) semiotic. To appropriate Merleau-Ponty, our words are again made flesh. To appropriate Marx, our commodities are returned to the realm of production and use-value. To appropriate Freud, our fetishes are no longer abstracted neuroses of our unconscious investments, but properly sublimated transferences: well-oiled psychic machinery.

When we type hypertext, we are not only indicating, we are expressing the act of indication. This is not only "something to see", but "something I want you do see". Please click on this. The signifer now has supplementary value as a signified. The signified and signifier meet again, not through a reduction of the difference, but by a meeting of the two aspects in a properly material plain--abstraction is conquered (aufhebung alert!) by a reevaluation and redeployment of the means of this semiotic production: scripting is a proletarian consciousness of digital writing.

Now: the sense in which the two terms "signifier" and "signified" are used shift between every philosopher's iteration, and even within each author use (somebody should be able to say something significant about that). To draw out this complicated dynamic and really treat the two terms fairly, I could read you the entirety of Of Grammatology, but I think we would all be relieved if I did not. (And certainly Derrida's own confusing play with the shifting meaning of these two words are indicative of his own philosophy. I imagine one could agree with that statement whether one appreciates him or not!)

However, I will simply Derrida a bit, to close my thoughts for now. With the caveat, of course, that my use of the two terms here are not exactly the same as his--but I believe the point holds true for both of us.

If, we wish to push our ability to write and express meaning beyond our current means, we must seek to unravel, and perhaps "de-construct" the nature of our current system. I cringe while saying so, but we must "hack" our language. Perhaps "script" is a better verb, not sounding quite as cliche, and closer my idea of what we should actually be doing: using and adapting pieces of our language as a material code for better interfacing with our language. A book is an excellent material technology, but we cannot use a book as our model of communication after considering our new, and vastly more "scripted" material technologies of signification:

"The good writing has therefore always been comprehended. [...] Comprehended, therefore, within a totality, and enveloped in a volume or a book. The idea of the book is the idea of a totality, finite or infinite, or the signifier; this totality of the signifier cannot be a totality unless a totality constituted by the [material] signified preexists it, supervises its inscriptions and its signs, and is independent of it in its ideality. The idea of the book, which always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense of writing. It is the encyclopedic protection of theology and of logocentrism against the disruption of writing, agains its aphoristic energy, and, as I shall specify later, against difference in general. If I distinguish this [un-totalistic, scriptable, material] text from the book, I shall say that the destruction of the book, as it is now under way in all domains, denudes the surface of the text. That necessary violence responds to a violence that was no less necessary."

-Derrida, Of Grammatology, "The Signifier and Truth"