AKMA’s Random Thoughts

I too was struck by Galloway's thoughts there. Partly because she's not merely offering a view of human nature, but also (as the comments seem to pick up) an awareness of the un-natural, non-intentional effects of code.

I read her post agreeing that the webworld replicates the reward-and-refusal mechanisms of the offline world and that a new venue for human relationships and community can't escape the trappings and traps of the venues it is modelled on, however well-intentioned. But in an uncharacteristically optimistic mode, I also think that the web offers more alternative routes to 'success' so that that those replicated problems become somewhat less significant in certain ways.

If one aspires to be central and submits to some (already established) center and its own definition, therein can lie frustration.

Partecipating as for sharing and/or sensing the preciousness of every single voice, is different.

But this can be _concrete_ only to some (limited, territorial) extent unless in the interpretation of weaving together one single text.

Still there is separateness between those living in that sentiment and the variegated rest.

I can't figure out what she's talking about. What rules do A-List bloggers set? Is she talking about who links to whom? Styles of rhetoric? Can someone give me an example? And what does "ally" mean really? I'm not being snarky. I just plain don't get it.

Even the notion of A-List bloggers is troubling. I know who I consider A-List: the people on my blogroll. So, we get to pick our own A-List. And with a gazillion blogs out there, I don't believe that there's a hierarchy of alphabet-List bloggers or a dominant culture and a subculture. The fact that of all the weblogs nominated for Webbies, I've only heard of a few says either that I am waaaay out of the mainstream and/or there isn't a mainstream.

In sum: Say wha'?

I agree, David, that A-list is a problematic term. Does it refer only to those 'original' bloggers like Meg Hourihan, Jason Kottke, etc. who were part of some inner circle, or is it just an expression of popularity measured in hits, making Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan A-listers. It seems to be used both ways, and other ways, fairly often. It may be a measure of supposed influence, but as you say the bloggers I actually read are more influential than those I'm told are important. The notion of high-school popularity seems an uneasy fit with blogging A-lists in absence of actual bullying and enforceable dominance (which is what I tried to argue in a post this morning).

argh.

substitute both "already established" and "own" with "perceived"

In fairness to Galloway, she approaches the division of the "blogosphere" (an already suspect notion) with a degree of detachment, talking about the discussion taking place in an evolving "tradition" which apparently is distinct in her mind from "research blogs," which we infer are less troubled by these BDSM issues.

David, for an example of what she's pointing to in ongoing discussions, consider the use of RSS which, as one comment on her piece suggests, can be experienced as a silent coded form of barrier to entry. I've heard this from others as well. The concern is not so much the bullying of human will, but the unanticipated results of offering certain coded networking formats that are implemented by some and not by others. The some then become, in a sense, other from the others. (In certain circles, discussion and use of tools like RSS have, some say, come to serve as badges of geekly honor and dom-ness.)

Isn't the writing of most code (not all, granted) driven by the fundamental assumptions that drive (or have driven) the way our human activities have been carried out to date? Every once in a while a breakthrough allows us to re-consider (Groove, perhaps ?)

Doesn't most code reinforce and further the evolution of the way our activities have come to be?

For example, my understanding is that a huge majority of coders are men - what mindsets are being reproduced, ipso facto ?

Anne's use of A-List is problematic, as David points out, because it assumes that we all prescribe (or in the case of RSS, subscribe) to the same A-List. This would infer that the entire Blogosphere is somehow rotating around a central list of Class A bloggers. Not only is that problematic socially (as I see it) but also technologically because it seems to go against the very structure (or lack of) of the internet.

This is an obvious sign that she is approaching the entire blogosphere from a "attached" position (as opposed to "detached", as Tom claims), in that she assumes we can all guess the A-List bloggers that she is referring to.

Great comments! And I do have a few quick responses ;)

Tom - I very much like the way you describe my broader concerns about how social practices inform software design and use - especially in response to Steve's claim that there is an "absence of actual bullying and enforceable dominance". Problematising the 'blogosphere' would entail more flexible means for understanding how power is negotiated heterarchically, hierarchically and technologically.

David - I loved that you asked so many questions ;) I don't think that, in practice, there is an A-List of bloggers "out-there" that dictate to everyone else. But as soon as we talk about one, we effectively describe/create a social scenario of dominant culture and competing sub-cultures...

Ryan, you are absolutely right - I am attached - and I wanted to draw attention to a process - the way a conversation was being defined.

Mostly, I think I just wanted to shift discussion away from "A-List" memes that were circulating incestuously through familiar clusters - and towards more general discussion on how blogging combines the technological and the social.

Thanks for the insightful comments - often more articulate than my original post ;)

Anne - I agree that 'Problematising the 'blogosphere' would entail more flexible means for understanding how power is negotiated heterarchically, hierarchically and technologically.' (and I like the way you put it - with a phrase like that I could have saved myself a lot of words.)

While I do think that blogging replicates and reinforces the power relationships/inequalities of the offline world, I'm more concerned that the power being reproduced is more often across economic divisions and questions of technology and access to it rather than at the level of voice, audience, and popularity.

Which isn't to trivialize those things, just to suggest (I hope not too ham-handedly) that we may be talking about a situation in which the power differential between the most 'successful' blogger and the least is negligible in comparison to that between any blogger and a person with no access to the web at all.

Whew! I think the only comment I'm sure to have understood right is David's... at least the discussion over at Anne's blog feels a little more accessible to me.

Still I won't give up just yet. I figure if I keep reading I'll pick up more and more of what you ?-listers are thinking...

Here's something (for those with virtual pipes, you may want to smoke it). Doesn't this discussion Galloway's point? The best (my judgement) discussion of her ideas has happened here, on the widely read random thoughts of our ghostly father. Why did people respond to AKMA's listing of Galloway's ideas and not to her ideas on her page? Galloway's ideas are sub-cultural (her language) but debate about them is cultural (her language) because AKMA encouraged this debate and sanctioned it on this space. If these leaves of mundungus inspire further comment, it will likely happen here and not on limature.
Although in this last case it will be appropriate, since I only exist on-line as someone who complains about printers or AKMA's friend.

Wow - I like this discussion ;)

Steve - I really appreciate your calling attention to issues of access, and I'd agree that the power differential between bloggers is less than between bloggers and non-bloggers. But I think that these issues of "voice, audience, and popularity" are also (related) issues of access and agency.

Trevor - it hasn't escaped my attention that the most interesting discussions on my post are going on in places outside the "A-List". And you're right, this discussion happened, in part, "because AKMA encouraged this debate and sanctioned it on this space". (Thanks AKMA!)

And incidentally, if it weren't for my referrer logs, I wouldn't have known this was going on, and I wouldn't have found all your sites and been terribly impressed ;)

BTW Seb - I see that one of your favourite philosophers is one of my *least* favourite - damn that Richard Rorty! [big-ass grin] But that means we'd have much to talk about ;)

Cheers!

Anne - I agree that these are related issues, though not necessarily in the ways we might initially expect. As you've said, power relationships happen in context specific ways, not necessarily familiar ones. Understanding, then, requires teasing out those contexts and their similarities to/differences from other arenas. While I maintain that web relationships offer more routes to success and (read: to circumvent the sanctioned cliques and avoid punishment), there are still waves of influence at play and those are worth exploring.

You’re welcome, Anne—even though you’ve shattered my cherished illusion of being an A-list blogger (I even have the right initial!). . . .

Oh, well. Seb’s characterization of our corner as a “?-list” sounds even better to me (where are the Mysterians when you need them?)

Following up on Steve’s point, I would affirm both the proposition that “power relationships happen in context specific ways” and the premise that power relationships will tend to favor familiar patterns (though not necessarily, again as Steve points out). Thus, one of the critical points at issue here isn’ whether the existence of an A-list proves that Blogaria is as stratified as the physical world (and in the same ways), but how stratification plays out in Blogaria, where it defies our expectations, and then whether (and in what ways) distinct sorts of power relationships arise in Blogaria.

Trevor (my ghastly brother? no, he’s way better-looking than me) wants to know why we’re talking about it here, instead of at Anne’s place. I suppose it’s somewhat arbitrary, but the ultimate particular (as far as I can tell) involves my dragging a point that Anne made at her place into a discursive neighborhood where these topics make up part of our everyday fare.

Although I wish this all were on the main page instead of in the comments; it feels so hidden when someone has to follow the extra click to get here.

Anyway, Anne, welcome to our fold of the tablecloth, and please come back—especially when you say such kind things about those of us on the ?-list. Our motto: “We’re not powerful, but we talk a lot.”

This variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.

This back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec

These secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we'll be writing a little less code than we've done in previous articles, but we'll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.

Note first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.

Each Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.

But variables get one benefit people do not

Let's take a moment to reexamine that. What we've done here is create two variables. The first variable is in the Heap, and we're storing data in it. That's the obvious one. But the second variable is a pointer to the first one, and it exists on the Stack. This variable is the one that's really called favoriteNumber, and it's the one we're working with. It is important to remember that there are now two parts to our simple variable, one of which exists in each world. This kind of division is common is C, but omnipresent in Cocoa. When you start making objects, Cocoa makes them all in the Heap because the Stack isn't big enough to hold them. In Cocoa, you deal with objects through pointers everywhere and are actually forbidden from dealing with them directly.