august 16internetting relationships for fun and profit
today:
joy of man's desiringi'm supposed to speak maybe at another seek conference; they asked me to blurb my remarks. i liked what i did enough to reproduce it here, in case they pare it down before it sees screenlight:
permeability and the content landscape 1998most professional internet publications begin bloated; their amply bankrolled staff wallowing in web-database paralysis while legions of hyperactive web denizens feverishly update their personal sites by hand. the content of the professionals is easier to find, and the content of the people is more compelling. can you bridge those worlds? yes, by incorporating rapid turnover and intense permeability where the users write the magazine and get the credit. at bud.com, friends make the best content.
of course fun and profit is relative - it's like the problem i had in economics class, is wealth only money? profit could be like happiness, man.reading an la times magazine article on matt drudge from steve rhodes gets me fired up to work on bud.com some more. he's an interesting character, and i like the fact that he knows about my page, but there's something creepy about him hanging out with ariana huffington and stuff. if i was invited to her house, would i go? sure, i'd talk to most anyone who wasn't trying to hurt me or sell me a kangol last night "to get on to bart" two hours after it had closed. but that the conservatives hoist him as a hero makes him a little easier to understand - drudge is a media sensation because he's aligned himself appropriately with the loyal opposition to the current administration and fortunately there's lots of loud ammunition. and there's nothing like the self made man in this country - why bother having big government when everyone can get a 486 and start a media revolution out of their 9th floor apartments? he's a hell of a lot saavier, and so more entertaining, than rush limbaugh or pat buchanan. but maybe just as dangerous? what is danger? aw heck: a lack of compassion i guess. he does benefit by a playing field levelled by technology. and he's represented by a noted anti-affirmative action lawyer.last night was a rare pleasure. perhaps in part because i'm a bachelor while amy visits eve in new york, and perhaps in part because i don't get out much. and perhaps because since cyborganic kinda hibernated i haven't been with so many geeks in one place
maz had a party last night, nex burfday. the place was packed with blue hairs and vinyl pants. alcohol and lsd. "speed garage" some new mutation of jungle i hadn't even heard of (described as house music with jungle beats and time-tweaked vocals). unreal on one screen - the most astonishing graphics i'd seen.
webcamera celebrities. erase with a digital camera and janet asking if she would show up here the next day. super mario cart (nintendo 64) played not off a cartridge, but off a zip disk. black lights and a disco ball. hungry programmers. even wb stayed late.
it was so stimulating which is what i crave i think when i go to other parties or even swarthmore events sometimes i remember moments when i didn't know what to do with myself. but there's always jeremy bornstein, and which of 20 topics could you take up with him and his origami business cards? and twenty other people i have felt akin to or even bonded with during the few years here away from home that i haven't communed with in ages. there was a constant high level of chatter and thumping beats and weird lights and video game stimulation and someone else on more hallucinogens
and i just loved the whole thing. i profess adoration for my peergroup here. maybe they were at their best. maybe i just don't get out enough. maybe once i write through the joy into the analysis where i see the lives torn up by ADD, the already damaged attention spans abused by mind altering experiences, the requisite presence of the great and horrible machines, the imperfect avoidance of more explicitly productive entertainment.
and then i talk to jonathan who went to some wellperns party where higher ups at content companies were there to chat
and there's just echelons of internet professionals gathering socially in this area - likely power and age rising as the level of visual and substance stimulation decreases.
woke up this morning and finished peter coyote's "memior" - sleeping where i fall. this was my graduation present from howard - an account of one dudes attempts to merge art and life, to live the examined life, to live off the grid, to fend for himself and his community, to rewrite the rules of capitalist/american/consumerist/western society in favour of bioregionalism and good sex.
it was satisfying and illuminating. he delves overmuch into his own sense of history/legacy/heroism/moment but that's probably part of why howard gave it to me.
talking on the phone with steve rhodes, i discovered that i had neglected to paste my "press" mailing list into a press release mailing last week (i sent it blind carbon copy only to steev). my press list is like every media person who's ever been in contact with me - at a conference, on the phone, interview for my article or theirs, walking through hotwired, whatever. so now that i have another shot, and i got some feedback from steve, i am trying to put on my best suit to appear before the court so they'll give me at least two glances. but then i think, give me two glances? the strength of bud.com is the contributors - there's very little of me there besides some spirit and some structure. the first press release i wrote was deliberatly irreverant, but now that i am recomposing email to all those folks, more staid things are coming to mind. more staid and probably more successful. compromise is a winner, in a way. kind of like peter coyote. all his far out friends didn't write books. few did. many died. none appeared in ET. peter went to wall street and hollywood, tried his toes in different shoes and so came out of all of it endowed enough to write a book in mill valley and france.
is that the joy of man's desiring?
i certainly want success for this project i'm working on with bud.com. someone said the other day, you should just sell that domain for 50 grand. that would be success of a sort i guess.
steve and maybe others i can't now recall have suggested that i publish more my connection to the site. like "from the creator of links from the underground, justin hall." like that would get my press release read, and more attention faster. maybe i'll do that a little, but i think i would rather have bud.com develop it's own reputation, with a little advertising help on this site. and i can't help but note the creation process - memories of making is exciting to look back over.
|
today's muzzik: uncle meat. some of frank zappa's orchestral/societal/lyrical and instrumental best. absurd music artfully wraught. utterly distracting in a demented and merry way.
|
next | august '98 | prev
justin hall | <justin at bud dot com>