I don’t know whether this is a personal blog or a place to work through “academic” ideas. The line between the two is so blurred. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Right now I’m trying to integrate a couple of concepts. The first concerns noise - the outlier, the mistake, the answer that doesn’t match the query. Mark Nunes talks about this in Cyberspaces of Everyday Life. The elimination of noise is a goal that is linked to efficiency and a sense of control. Amazon tries for this with it user profiles of where and what I’ve searched for/bought. It spits back suggestions that are individually tailored to what it knows about me aiming to eliminate any dross that might waste my time. Only relevant information please.
Another idea I’ve been working on that was supposed to be a paper for a directed study from last semester but is still in the works, is identity, boundaries, why some things are “appropriate” and some things aren’t. In other words, accepted boundaries define what is allowed. Allowed by whom? I guess the powers that be. When those boundaries are compromised it can make people uneasy, queasy even. EEEWWWE… It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. If you don’t like it here, leave. This is America; learn to talk right; . These kids and their obsession with computers – nobody knows how to read or write anymore! Yada yada yada… The thing is, there’s always somebody messing with the boundaries, mixing up stuff that ”should” have a proper place. It’s just that these people usually don’t have a lot of power; they’re on the outside. But the reason they don’t have power is because the old boundaries don’t work for them. They make their own so they can have a little control, at least, even if it’s outside the “norm”.
So, boundaries define noise. Old story. But is there a chance that boundaries are becoming less solid with the Internet? Search engines like Google combined with what I imagine as the typrical user’s search criteria probably just reinforce accepted categories. Is there a way to search differently – a way that produces more possibilities? Can boundaries be mutable and functional at the same time - because boundaries are sometimes useful and necessary?
The personal part: I don’t really care about any of this stuff except that it affects me, my life, how I view things. The more I learn, the more my own definitions and boundaries change. Sometimes I don’t like it. It’s uncomfortable, even painful. What’s the payoff? More options, more control maybe. A paradox in this is that although I realize that I act from a position of self-centeredness, by attempting to accept the transience of borders, the center becomes dispersed. Perhaps, the center becoming unstable does not mean chaos but a new ordering system.
