This is a message for Catriona.
I can't leave any messages on your blog! This is the only way I can tell you.
I tried to send Burton Dasset to "that place full of Rangers and Celtic supporters", but I'm afraid he only got as far as Corby.
Showing posts with label Social Networks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Networks. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Friday, 19 August 2011
Giving up and starting blogging
In an outrageous twist on an old theme, Doug Chaplin has stopped blogging. And started blogging. And told a fairly awful joke. But that's fine.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
On mobile social networking
For all those followers who have received half a posting, and are wondering where the other half is, apologies. I have been trying out some 'app', as they are called, by the name of Twitterdroid or some such. It was Hnaef's idea - I think he's trying to get me out of The Great House.
But where Hnaef suffers from rotten spelling, I seem to be afflicted with "fat fingers". Or, as I must now call the condition in these precious days, "sub-optimalistically slender fingers". As a result, my post on "Brooding on the Chaos" is as stuck between universes as a particularly expendable minor Dr Who character. I hope to recover it in time for tea. But in the meantime, I hope this missive, typed by my gravitationally-challenged fingers as it is, will suffice.
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
#CBBC11
An interesting afternoon at the Christian Buzzwords and Bandwagon Conference 11 (or, for those following on Twitter, #cbbc11). A great gig for me, not least as, being a totally virtual conference, I could attend in person.
Many people contributed to the special atmosphere at today's conference, especially the amazing Pastor Andy Ydna, a cyber-missionary in so many ways. Putting the "buzz" into bandwagon being just one of his key messages. Although I actually missed Andy's address, as for some reason my talk on "Personal Protective Equipment in the Online Environment" was scheduled for "The Tent" at the same time. I thought "The Tent" was a trendy name for an alternative venue, probably on the edgy "fringe" of the event. Instead of which, turned out I was in a tent. Although that didn't stop me putting on a riveting display of riveting, to demonstrate how physical fixing fits into a metaphysical fixation. And I was glad to talk to Andy in the bar afterwards - although he kept looking over my shoulder in the hope that someone more famous would turn up, (@kouya, I believe, was suffering from the same thing) and tweeting @crimperman via his mobile to see how the show was going. But between that and taking calls and Skype-ing the other keynote speakers, he was kind enough to tell me about his concept of "Postmodern Pat and his black/white Schrodinger's cat".
The other buzz was about Gladys Sydalg. She had a great talk on bandwagons. Didn't understand a word of it. But I didn't care, as she was being streamed to our Android devices so we could all get in the bar quicker.
It was just as well, as I couldn't have heard anything in the main hall. Apparently the sound of people tapping on netbook and mobile keys was drowning out the keynote speakers, while the bandwidth hit from the sheer uploading of instant reaction actually brought down Gladys's Skype link on several occasions.
So I've learnt a lot about buzzwords today. And about bandwagons. Mostly - don't get in their way. And if one gets out of control, run. I've found out that "biversity" isn't a real word, and interoperability doesn't mean two surgeons practicing on each other.
Most importantly, I've learnt that people can be very funny and creative on the web, without being cruel. I think...
And I've had one two many meads, so I'm off to St Pancras now. If anyone sees a sleeping Archdruid in steel-toe-capped shoes, can you wake me up at Bedford?
Many people contributed to the special atmosphere at today's conference, especially the amazing Pastor Andy Ydna, a cyber-missionary in so many ways. Putting the "buzz" into bandwagon being just one of his key messages. Although I actually missed Andy's address, as for some reason my talk on "Personal Protective Equipment in the Online Environment" was scheduled for "The Tent" at the same time. I thought "The Tent" was a trendy name for an alternative venue, probably on the edgy "fringe" of the event. Instead of which, turned out I was in a tent. Although that didn't stop me putting on a riveting display of riveting, to demonstrate how physical fixing fits into a metaphysical fixation. And I was glad to talk to Andy in the bar afterwards - although he kept looking over my shoulder in the hope that someone more famous would turn up, (@kouya, I believe, was suffering from the same thing) and tweeting @crimperman via his mobile to see how the show was going. But between that and taking calls and Skype-ing the other keynote speakers, he was kind enough to tell me about his concept of "Postmodern Pat and his black/white Schrodinger's cat".
The other buzz was about Gladys Sydalg. She had a great talk on bandwagons. Didn't understand a word of it. But I didn't care, as she was being streamed to our Android devices so we could all get in the bar quicker.
It was just as well, as I couldn't have heard anything in the main hall. Apparently the sound of people tapping on netbook and mobile keys was drowning out the keynote speakers, while the bandwidth hit from the sheer uploading of instant reaction actually brought down Gladys's Skype link on several occasions.
So I've learnt a lot about buzzwords today. And about bandwagons. Mostly - don't get in their way. And if one gets out of control, run. I've found out that "biversity" isn't a real word, and interoperability doesn't mean two surgeons practicing on each other.
Most importantly, I've learnt that people can be very funny and creative on the web, without being cruel. I think...
And I've had one two many meads, so I'm off to St Pancras now. If anyone sees a sleeping Archdruid in steel-toe-capped shoes, can you wake me up at Bedford?
Monday, 25 April 2011
In Cyberspace, no-one can see your mitre
Because it was from the Guardian, I didn't like to mention it until after Easter Day was over. But now it is (have a good Octave, by the way)... And I should warn that, in case you couldn't tell below, there's no research whatever gone into this. It's my gut feel.
"What effect has the Internet had on Religion?" asks Aleks Krotoski.
Obviously, it's given a nice hang-out to the kind of atheists who would otherwise sit upstairs on their own in their parents' houses fuming that nobody understands them - as reference the comments below Krotoski's article if you need evidence (but why would you need evidence, dear, God-loving readers that you are? Faith will be enough for you - you don't even have to follow my link to know that the article exists. Oh, you did? OK.
But on a world-wide scale, at least for Christians and neo-pagans and fruitcakes, and for the kind of intelligent atheists who don't think writing the words "sky fairy" means they have won their argument - and even for those who do - it's given us a level playing field. On the Internet,. the most popular religious sight can be by an Archbishop, or an Archdruid (I can dream) or the Flying Spaghetti monster or anything. The first criterion is that it has to be interesting - which will tend to reduce FSM's chances, once you've got the joke the first time. But then the people reading have the chance to judge what the site is worth. And so sites such as eChurchblog or Cranmer or Gurdur will bring people to them because literary worth is matched with wide interests and dedication. Sure, a boring Archbishop (thinking of none in particular) or dull comedian (thinking of several) will attract followers on Twitter - but merely "following" does not mean following - interacting and caring and relating and discussing and challenging. The popularity of a good site bypasses hierarchies - even the hierarchies they support, if they're Fr Z. And so a billion informal networks form - each one the result of the wave function of a particular human being and the sites and people he/she follows. And instead of the top-down structure preferred by the people at the top of structures, you've got a spider's web of authority radiating out from the consumer (for in a sense that's what they are) to their numerous spirituality providers.
And then there's speed. A heresy can be discussed, anathematised and/or followed and/or expanded within a day. Fakery can be found out - or find a refuge, or gain credence - rapidly. Sensible and not-so-sensible ideas can be scrutinised at the speed of light. Rob Bell was vilified a month before his words could even be distributed, printed as they were on a dead tree. That's the difference. 500 years ago, the printing press meant the Pope could be challenged by a German monk over the course of a year or two. Today, at an hour's notice, he can be examined by an alleged Smolensk butcher, the reinvigorated ashes of an Archbishop of Canterbury, a mouse or any one of a hundred thousand small-town Prots from the good ol' US of A.
But as the speed of virtual interaction increases, so one of the challenges is to the face-to-face interaction. Why should I waste my time arguing with a bunch of deadbeat Beaker People in real life, when I can find people I agree with from New Zealand to New Brighton? Why should I drag myself down to church in the rain when I can join in with Virtual Abbey (albeit I get Matins a bit on the late side - round about lunchtime)? Why go out and find a bunch of flesh-and-blood Humanists to relate to, when I remember that they're all a bit spotty and pasty-faced, and their avatars are so much more attractive?
Because we're humans, that's why. Because we love to communicate, and we need to see each other. Because we're flesh and blood, not floating brains in buckets of electrolyte solution. At least I reckon most of us are.
So get out and meet some real people. That's what having bodies and senses is for. Real people that may cause you problems you can't just solve by blocking them. People who when they love one another properly don't just do it by adding an "x" to what they say. In a real community which exists in a real world, where their inter-relationship models a real Trinity and not @God on Twitter.
And when you've done all that stuff, can you nip back and link to this? Only my Wikio rating's appalling.
"What effect has the Internet had on Religion?" asks Aleks Krotoski.
Obviously, it's given a nice hang-out to the kind of atheists who would otherwise sit upstairs on their own in their parents' houses fuming that nobody understands them - as reference the comments below Krotoski's article if you need evidence (but why would you need evidence, dear, God-loving readers that you are? Faith will be enough for you - you don't even have to follow my link to know that the article exists. Oh, you did? OK.
But on a world-wide scale, at least for Christians and neo-pagans and fruitcakes, and for the kind of intelligent atheists who don't think writing the words "sky fairy" means they have won their argument - and even for those who do - it's given us a level playing field. On the Internet,. the most popular religious sight can be by an Archbishop, or an Archdruid (I can dream) or the Flying Spaghetti monster or anything. The first criterion is that it has to be interesting - which will tend to reduce FSM's chances, once you've got the joke the first time. But then the people reading have the chance to judge what the site is worth. And so sites such as eChurchblog or Cranmer or Gurdur will bring people to them because literary worth is matched with wide interests and dedication. Sure, a boring Archbishop (thinking of none in particular) or dull comedian (thinking of several) will attract followers on Twitter - but merely "following" does not mean following - interacting and caring and relating and discussing and challenging. The popularity of a good site bypasses hierarchies - even the hierarchies they support, if they're Fr Z. And so a billion informal networks form - each one the result of the wave function of a particular human being and the sites and people he/she follows. And instead of the top-down structure preferred by the people at the top of structures, you've got a spider's web of authority radiating out from the consumer (for in a sense that's what they are) to their numerous spirituality providers.
And then there's speed. A heresy can be discussed, anathematised and/or followed and/or expanded within a day. Fakery can be found out - or find a refuge, or gain credence - rapidly. Sensible and not-so-sensible ideas can be scrutinised at the speed of light. Rob Bell was vilified a month before his words could even be distributed, printed as they were on a dead tree. That's the difference. 500 years ago, the printing press meant the Pope could be challenged by a German monk over the course of a year or two. Today, at an hour's notice, he can be examined by an alleged Smolensk butcher, the reinvigorated ashes of an Archbishop of Canterbury, a mouse or any one of a hundred thousand small-town Prots from the good ol' US of A.
But as the speed of virtual interaction increases, so one of the challenges is to the face-to-face interaction. Why should I waste my time arguing with a bunch of deadbeat Beaker People in real life, when I can find people I agree with from New Zealand to New Brighton? Why should I drag myself down to church in the rain when I can join in with Virtual Abbey (albeit I get Matins a bit on the late side - round about lunchtime)? Why go out and find a bunch of flesh-and-blood Humanists to relate to, when I remember that they're all a bit spotty and pasty-faced, and their avatars are so much more attractive?
Because we're humans, that's why. Because we love to communicate, and we need to see each other. Because we're flesh and blood, not floating brains in buckets of electrolyte solution. At least I reckon most of us are.
So get out and meet some real people. That's what having bodies and senses is for. Real people that may cause you problems you can't just solve by blocking them. People who when they love one another properly don't just do it by adding an "x" to what they say. In a real community which exists in a real world, where their inter-relationship models a real Trinity and not @God on Twitter.
And when you've done all that stuff, can you nip back and link to this? Only my Wikio rating's appalling.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Blogging, textual criticism and making it up as you go along
Never before have so many oddballs had the ability to create the future for themselves. Or, at least, not since Sparks last made the charts.
It was UKViewer that suggested we needed a special Sunday for bloggers. But was he right? I have my doubts. The idea of my Special Sundays was, rather like those in the wider religious community, to remind us of things that we don't think about very often or we may not think are important during our daily lives -Healthcare, Christian Aid, the Resurrection. That sort of thing. But bloggers are different. Bloggers don't need their special Sundays. Because tomorrow belongs to us, and those of our ilk such as the Tweeters.
As the dead-tree press withdraws its content behind its firewalls, something will take its place. In these parts that's currently the BBC. But as the Age of Osborne roars forwards, even the BBC may eventually have to draw in its horns. Even now the BBC does not always want to cover everything the blogosphere wants to cover. The case of Katharine Birbalsingh, for example, has greatly exercised Cranmer but the BBC doesn't want to cover it at all, apparently.
So as the professional press withdraws from the Internet, a source of free news could take its place. The world of blogging and tweeting could well do it, bringing hot news from anywhere. How democratic, how egalitarian, how libertarian. But how unreliable it could be. Anyone thinking that they were collecting hot news from Smolensk when reading the doings of @konnolsky, for instance, would be in for a real shock if they actually visited Smolensk and tried to find Yuri and the gang. Apart from anything else, I believe that @konnolsky is actually a charcutier, not a bona-fide butcher.
But you can see how it works. If we have to pay for supposedly reliable information, or even the Telegraph, the day comes when we decide we're better off getting our news from free from any old blog or tweeter. And if we do that, then we're going to have validate our sources - otherwise you could end up lambasting an imaginary Fundamentalist Baptist for his view on women's ministry, or praying for the salvation of a fictional neo-pagan religious leader. And that would never do, would it?
After all, I could write on this notice board of Husborne Crawley life all sorts of things that I claimed were going on in Husborne Crawley, and you'd never know that I was making it all up. In the same way that nobody realises that Revd Lesley is actually a 1st class cricketer who just wishes to be a vicar, Clayboy is genuinely made of clay, David Walker is actually Ruth Gledhill making a few quid on the side now she's hidden behind the paywall, and the Church Mouse really is a mouse. So when I tell you that the Chapel of St Bogwulf has disappeared into a black hole, or that there really are wallabies grazing on the sides of the road round here - how would you know I was telling the truth?
We're going to need rules for how to assess the validity of a news source. A rough rule of thumb would be that the more sites comment on the same thing, the truer it might be - but the science of stemmology helps us to see how that might not work. If one maniac in Trafalgar Square claims to have had a vision of a 65 foot tall Jeremy Paxman, and twelve people pass that information on - the next thing you know the 65 foot tall Paxo would be a well-established fact. And if somewhere down the line by a copyist's error or wishful thinking the Paxo becomes Brian Humphreys, this second family of information would be perpetuated, becoming the truth to the Humphreysites - in a manner familiar to all of us that are advised via Facebook and email of blasphemous theatrical productions, lost children or that "having no thumbs is not a condition, and people with no thumbs are just as good at twiddling their thumbs as those of us with thumbs". No, the important thing would be to find the number of quantifiably different accounts of the same event - two or three witnesses being the minimum, one would imagine. And in this case to have two accounts that agree in outline but differ in fine detail would be more plausible than to have 100 accounts that are word-for-word the same.
The problem would then lie in the sheer number of feeds one would have to access in order to get something that was approaching the truth. One would have to compare the reports of Trafalgar Square Paxman to those of Humphreys, find the oldest, try to find the blog where the identity changed and then make one's own judgements. Some kind of Wikio-style aggregator would be required, capable of sorting and correlating reports into families, and weighting known, reliable sources. Then the site would enable us to sift the true from the false, the genuine from the Labour peer expenses claim. Instead of having to trawl news from the web ourselves, we could go to one place and find out what was going on in the world, confident that we were reading something that approached the truth. Who knows, as time goes by we might even be prepared to pay for it.
It was UKViewer that suggested we needed a special Sunday for bloggers. But was he right? I have my doubts. The idea of my Special Sundays was, rather like those in the wider religious community, to remind us of things that we don't think about very often or we may not think are important during our daily lives -Healthcare, Christian Aid, the Resurrection. That sort of thing. But bloggers are different. Bloggers don't need their special Sundays. Because tomorrow belongs to us, and those of our ilk such as the Tweeters.
As the dead-tree press withdraws its content behind its firewalls, something will take its place. In these parts that's currently the BBC. But as the Age of Osborne roars forwards, even the BBC may eventually have to draw in its horns. Even now the BBC does not always want to cover everything the blogosphere wants to cover. The case of Katharine Birbalsingh, for example, has greatly exercised Cranmer but the BBC doesn't want to cover it at all, apparently.
So as the professional press withdraws from the Internet, a source of free news could take its place. The world of blogging and tweeting could well do it, bringing hot news from anywhere. How democratic, how egalitarian, how libertarian. But how unreliable it could be. Anyone thinking that they were collecting hot news from Smolensk when reading the doings of @konnolsky, for instance, would be in for a real shock if they actually visited Smolensk and tried to find Yuri and the gang. Apart from anything else, I believe that @konnolsky is actually a charcutier, not a bona-fide butcher.
But you can see how it works. If we have to pay for supposedly reliable information, or even the Telegraph, the day comes when we decide we're better off getting our news from free from any old blog or tweeter. And if we do that, then we're going to have validate our sources - otherwise you could end up lambasting an imaginary Fundamentalist Baptist for his view on women's ministry, or praying for the salvation of a fictional neo-pagan religious leader. And that would never do, would it?
After all, I could write on this notice board of Husborne Crawley life all sorts of things that I claimed were going on in Husborne Crawley, and you'd never know that I was making it all up. In the same way that nobody realises that Revd Lesley is actually a 1st class cricketer who just wishes to be a vicar, Clayboy is genuinely made of clay, David Walker is actually Ruth Gledhill making a few quid on the side now she's hidden behind the paywall, and the Church Mouse really is a mouse. So when I tell you that the Chapel of St Bogwulf has disappeared into a black hole, or that there really are wallabies grazing on the sides of the road round here - how would you know I was telling the truth?
We're going to need rules for how to assess the validity of a news source. A rough rule of thumb would be that the more sites comment on the same thing, the truer it might be - but the science of stemmology helps us to see how that might not work. If one maniac in Trafalgar Square claims to have had a vision of a 65 foot tall Jeremy Paxman, and twelve people pass that information on - the next thing you know the 65 foot tall Paxo would be a well-established fact. And if somewhere down the line by a copyist's error or wishful thinking the Paxo becomes Brian Humphreys, this second family of information would be perpetuated, becoming the truth to the Humphreysites - in a manner familiar to all of us that are advised via Facebook and email of blasphemous theatrical productions, lost children or that "having no thumbs is not a condition, and people with no thumbs are just as good at twiddling their thumbs as those of us with thumbs". No, the important thing would be to find the number of quantifiably different accounts of the same event - two or three witnesses being the minimum, one would imagine. And in this case to have two accounts that agree in outline but differ in fine detail would be more plausible than to have 100 accounts that are word-for-word the same.
The problem would then lie in the sheer number of feeds one would have to access in order to get something that was approaching the truth. One would have to compare the reports of Trafalgar Square Paxman to those of Humphreys, find the oldest, try to find the blog where the identity changed and then make one's own judgements. Some kind of Wikio-style aggregator would be required, capable of sorting and correlating reports into families, and weighting known, reliable sources. Then the site would enable us to sift the true from the false, the genuine from the Labour peer expenses claim. Instead of having to trawl news from the web ourselves, we could go to one place and find out what was going on in the world, confident that we were reading something that approached the truth. Who knows, as time goes by we might even be prepared to pay for it.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Twitterati
Much concern among the Community's social networking community today after Young Keith threw a sheep at poor Marston Moretaine. If they'd both been on Facebook at the time it wouldn't have been so bad.
However, the incessant twittering around the place is getting me down. Updates such as "Edith is on Twitter", for example. That is a message that can be read from the meta-data of another tweet, if you follow me.
Also, "I'm Spartacus" can get very wearing when retweeted too many times.
Meanwhile Elois is now impossible to drag away from her laptop. She's missed six sunrises in succession, and on each occasion her tweets have consisted of "missed another sunrise due to being on Twitter :( ".
Likewise the Facebook status of Drayton Parslow - "Drayton should be the Archdruid" is getting a bit monotonous after nine months. As are the 52 "Likes" after it. Don't forget, I know who you are.
Burton, always a stickler for details, is definitely driving us all to distraction, with his consistent updates on the frequency, size and - heaven help me - texture of his bowel movements. That would be bad enough, but why some freak has taken to retweeting them is beyond me.
I feel the need to stress the Community Rule #42 of the Beaker Folk at this point - "Use of internet social networking is permissible, and indeed encouraged, if it leads to the increased weal of the persons of the community." However it must be modified by Rule #43, "In most cases, your opinions are tedious, predicatable and fatuous. They are a waste of the electrons that carry them and the energy required to encode the magnetic dipoles that store them."
I'm ever so pleased we've got as far as Rule #43. When we started we only had the one, and that was "Don't be evil". And we had to give that one back.
Meanwhile, bad news about the Moot House in Second Life. It's burnt down.
However, the incessant twittering around the place is getting me down. Updates such as "Edith is on Twitter", for example. That is a message that can be read from the meta-data of another tweet, if you follow me.
Also, "I'm Spartacus" can get very wearing when retweeted too many times.
Meanwhile Elois is now impossible to drag away from her laptop. She's missed six sunrises in succession, and on each occasion her tweets have consisted of "missed another sunrise due to being on Twitter :( ".
Likewise the Facebook status of Drayton Parslow - "Drayton should be the Archdruid" is getting a bit monotonous after nine months. As are the 52 "Likes" after it. Don't forget, I know who you are.
Burton, always a stickler for details, is definitely driving us all to distraction, with his consistent updates on the frequency, size and - heaven help me - texture of his bowel movements. That would be bad enough, but why some freak has taken to retweeting them is beyond me.
I feel the need to stress the Community Rule #42 of the Beaker Folk at this point - "Use of internet social networking is permissible, and indeed encouraged, if it leads to the increased weal of the persons of the community." However it must be modified by Rule #43, "In most cases, your opinions are tedious, predicatable and fatuous. They are a waste of the electrons that carry them and the energy required to encode the magnetic dipoles that store them."
I'm ever so pleased we've got as far as Rule #43. When we started we only had the one, and that was "Don't be evil". And we had to give that one back.
Meanwhile, bad news about the Moot House in Second Life. It's burnt down.
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