Date:         Tue, 20 Aug 2002 09:13:59 -0700
From: Soli Psis <solipsis@HEVANET.COM>
Subject: Re: alt.oids\\\\\the curiously strong usenet group!
To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA

not to reveal a buboe in the midst of a "curing" but,

for one thing, TO ME, the whole notion of NET WRITING, NET TEXT, NET
INTERACTIVITY, all of it, the whole lot is
so much privileged cate(mon)gorisation..  The entire field of experience is
a living network.. a semiosphere.. "I" AM A NETWORK.. the brain is a
network..the body..  the book is a network. THE ECOSYSTEM AND ITS DIEING IS
A NETWORK, THE PADEUMA, IE CULTURE, is a network.. putting it country
simple, the universe is an energy network.. This privileged category of
NETWURK.codework.. is just another layer in the total palimpset of network
integration.. and saying that text in a book is not interactive is rubbish..
MARX, hello this is russia.. we read your book.. oops.. look what we did..?
not to be sarcastic, but this is like listening to two rats scurrying inside
a pipe maze.. The notion that webcrafted artworks have some monopoly on
"true" interactivity, or should, or ever will, or can at all, is just plain
hooey.. or that author privilege is some kind of problem.. anything is a
problem if you make it a problem.. authorial affect is just another
"effect-field" in a field of total effect.. which is specific contextually..
place, time reader etc.. this Barthesian hang-over which has been foisted on
us, has about as much sap as a wicker commode.. Author Privilege.. Is that
what Baudelaire had.. Lautreamont? Rimbaud? Gertrude Stein? Kathy Acker?
Whatever! Look, the web offers some new vistas in instantaneity, in
modulation of the linear, and mostly in convenience.. other than that, it
becomes just another form of bad-breath.. I like books, and they are plenty
interactive.. And it is wonderful to make the most of a new cultural
environment, the web.. but the web is also just another outfolding of the
incredibly complex network of development and biology of the last 15,000
years.. I don't need or want to be a netwurker or codeartist or anything of
the sort.. there are already chemical, molecular codes seething through my
body, engendering my EXPERIENCE.. which is much more interesting than PACKET
EXCHANGE,, and much higher bandwidth.. now that said.. the tone of this may
be bellicose.. but I say this in the spirit of zen, as in a board to the
head saying wake up.. You are standing in the network, and the network is
YOU! be creative with it.. repair it.. express it.. I'm just not sure we
need a privileged category for computer enabled writing.. its seems
frivolous at best and demeaning mostly.. as the letter itself is a fantastic
accretion and trace of the human network.. Web-based aesthetic discussions
have their place, but the web, to me is not the raison d'etre..


just a thought

lanny