AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Sneak Preview and Other Stuff

Jim McGee posts a warm-up summary of what he expects to talk about when he comes to Seabury this Thursday, April 10, at 7:30 in the Seabury Lounge.

His summary makes me think of a couple of things: one, the distinction between trees and rhizomes in Deleuze and Guattari (a distinction whose compelling insight never quite won me over — I’m too close, I guess, to some trees); and two, the inestimable importance of being-in-public as a mode of digital practice. This touches on questions of identity; if Jim’s right that thinking in public constitutes “ an important aspect of what organizations must learn to do to survive and thrive in today's world,” then digital anonymity has to take on a more marginal importance. Perhaps we can maintain digital anonymity for certain purposes, but we’ll do that not by resisting the enterprises at work to effect DigID, but by doing all we can to warp their work to our purposes, by patrolling their scope. Which sounds more like what Eric Norlin is saying (when he’s not talking about the war or its economic impact, about which we will just flat-out never, ever agree) (about the war, I mean — I know better than to argue with people about economics, a field that makes theology look like Newtonian physics) than what David Weinberger is saying, and that surprises me.

I was meaning to blog about DigID and something Eric wrote that was, he suggested, “not DigID for a change.” I’ll put that off till tomorrow, but I do see a connection between Eric’s Hillmanian response to Doc’s appreciation of Lakoff (on one hand) and DigID on the other. (By the way, I think there’s much to appreciate in the critical responses the Lakoff piece is provoking, but (along with Stavros, who blogs here and comments somewhere else I couldn’t find) I welcome Lakoff’s insight even as I recognize some infelicities in this particular version of his argument).

Posted by AKMA at April 7, 2003 04:14 PM | TrackBack