The prefixes will vary, but the common suffix of some of the more interesting developments for individuals intent upon making their mark upon the web is "casting". This humble blog has brought up the possibilities of "pod"casting in the past. We have also noticed the recent touting of HD radio and of "multi"casting -- a technology that may become a commercial radio alternative to satellite. There's even something called "road"casting, wherein cars equipped with special wi fi-like setups become their own radio stations, streaming audio content to other nearby vehicles.
This is the age of self-syndication. Don't have a conventional outlet for your viewpoint? No problem. RSS, my friend. Can't find an audience for this viewpoint? Er, well, we haven't quite solved that one yet. Perhaps in the future our society will need designated, paid, professional "readers" whose job it is to be an audience for the millions of voices on the net. It's a tough job, but with millions of consumers creating their own content, somebody's going to have to do it.
However, that's still in the future. Today, we -- we as in the people behind this blog -- are currently embarking on an as-yet-unnamed project that will produce other forms of original media content for our community via the web. Hopefully, there will be more on this soon. The bottom-line for us is NOT a particular political or cultural agenda beyond creating a space for conversation on local issues. My own personal feeling is that these issues -- and this project -- will promote the values of the TEC triangle (Transparency, Engagement, Collaboration). But we'll see.
One form of casting we do not approve of is "type"casting. Because we know that when you reduce issues -- and people -- to simplistic caricatures, the possibility for real conversation and real understanding is lost.
1 comment:
That's a very interesting flavor of that expression you've introduced me to, and not one I would have considered or likely run across my own self, being much more on the user side of things generally speaking.
There is of course a very strong drive within many corners of linguistic usage toward clarity and logic. And yet, some may say, there is an equally powerful drive toward ambiguity. As an example, twentieth century literary criticism as has been practiced in your various major research universities was for a long time dominated by the New Criticism which took as on of its founding principles that ambiguity was one of the highest functions of great literature.
By the time I got to school, much of that had splintered into various schools of critical thought: your french feminists, post-structuralists, new historicists, queer theorists, neo-marxists, neo-pragmatists and so on. But, the effect of the new critics could still be felt among the older generations of the tenured radicals.
In fact, if you ask Turf you might find even greater insight into the earlier critical models. At least I assume he would, unless by the time he had arrived at the U the structuralists had already taken hold.
None of that is really to the point of your observation. Except to say that my suspicion is that writers of code do not suffer under the same hierarchy of value that the language has suffered under for so long -- a hierarchy that the New Critics did their part to reiterate inasmuch as they valued most highly the sorts of modernist texts that were least penetrable to the average reader. At least code has as its end some user -- such as myself -- who must be able to manipulate its product. Some coders of language seemed to prefer the view expressed by a contemporary of Einstein's. This man, when confronted by a journalist telling him that only two people (other than Einstein himself) in the world could possible understand Einstein's (notoriously complex) theory of special relativity, paused for a minute, reflecting, and then responded, "OK. So who's the other one?"
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