Thoughts on my side career

Since, as you all know, I am not technologically adept (see previous post) some of you may be surprised to learn that my idea of a sideline is to be a theorist on internet culture. These thoughts were prompted by Justin sending me this article from wired: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66671,00.html?tw=wn_story_mailer
(incidentally, it was wired who officially decreed in 1998 that the words Internet, Web and Email need no longer be capitalised, just as Radio, Television and Computer no longer are.)

I toyed with making this a career, since I wrote my honors thesis on Aol Instant Messenger and the rules of discourse, so I've read the "literature" although it has pretty much exploded since then. The reason it has exploded? Blogs. That's all there is to it. I am becoming more and more into the idea of writing about how people interact on the internet, how they use it, why they use it, how it differs from writing, how it differs from speech, how it differs from journalism.

My thesis advisors, Connie Eble, she of slang expertise, and Paul Jones, he of ibiblio.org, (see this for more connie and paul collaboration) had suggested that my corpus would be valuable to be published, since everyone needs text to work on. If I had not been using a mac lab and therefore ichat, it would also have been timestamped, something I have wanted to look into more, the spatial aspect of IM.

I also want to look into the europe/us divide of msn messenger versus aol instant messenger. I wonder what usage differences there are and how much of this is due to format of windows and tools and options and how much is a europe/us thing.

I have also, through the medium of www.justinsomnia.org and his blogging about blogging, links to articles about blogging, and comments on local blogger meet ups and the first ever bloggercon, become very interested in exploring the world of blogging.

I would not describe myself as a typical blogger. For a start, I am not a teenager, I am 21 (soon to be the FRIGHTENING 22) and second, just as in IM I stay away from acronyms, smileys and text message language (r u ok? etc) I try to inject a level of eloquence, a prosaic style not often seen. Partly, it is because I am conscious of the blurring of the line of demarcation between speech and writing online, and partly, it is because I am super pretentious.

Anyway, I don't adhere very much to justin's list of blogging ethics and etiquette, but hey, you know what, that is essentially a prescriptive list, not a descriptive one, and while he might have a masters in information systems or other such nonsense, his undergrad degree was in linguistics, and gert would be very disappointed to know that one of his pupils had resorted to safire-like grammarian prescriptive tendencies.

Linguists are really a bunch of hippies, and I consider linguistics, not grammar, as a good, instructive analogy to help people understand why being liberal is a good thing that won't ruin society. See, basically, linguists come from the points of view that any form of expression, spoken, signed or mumbled, is valid as long as it is viable. As long as one other person understands you, you have a language community. Language is all about community, and therefore all about society. However at the same time and finding prescriptive grammar inhibitive to this social aspect of language, we understand and explain, though do not encourage or demand, that there are codes of power that, in order to advance/function in a larger society, say, the business world, one has to buy into and learn. Standard usage of your native language for example. Sometimes, as in, say, 1950's britain, you need a particular accent as well as a particular dialect (read, lexicon plus syntax.) Just because something is a prestige dialect does not mean it is inherently better, but it is socially more useful.

Equally, being a liberal/libertarian (makes me right wing in europe, left wing in the US, I think I just like the color blue a lot more than red actually...) means that you tolerate lots of other people's views. They have a right to exist, but they are no more "correct" than your own, or those of the people in power. However, those in power (in a democracy) have the "prestige" opinions. Now, we don't have to buy into them, but to live in society, you may have to accept them. Until the next election anyway. If grammar books are like static snapshots in the continuous variation of language change, then elections serve the same purpose: society realigns its ideas as embodied in the ruling party. Neat eh?

So anyway, I am going to do something about publishing my thesis work, in a shorter form, and start talking more to justin about blogging, and reading more and might work it up in time. I should submit to the JCMC(journal of computer mediated communication), since it's expressly concerned with such matters, and is, appropriately, only online.