Today I start a new job, as Campaigns Manager at English PEN, promoting literature and human rights worldwide. A dream job for a blogger, I reckon.
As before, consider this full disclosure to the bloggers’ register of interests, and sufficient explanation should this site suddenly begin to feature more posts on imprisoned writers or UK libel law.
One of my first acts will be to go an hear Giles Ji Ungpakorn speak about Thailand’s archaic Lese-Majesty laws at SOAS, 7pm. Its chaired by Carole Seymour-Jones, chair of English PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee. PDF details here.
Author: Robert (Page 210 of 328)
I’ve been helping the Convention on Modern Liberty edit some videos in support of the project. My colleague Portia made a compilation:
Please do have a gander, and pass it on to your friends.
Following the stratospherically popular “Its the faded parchment screen print agitprop aesthetic YouTube round-up“, I now present images of a couple of packages that are currently sitting my kitchen work surface. In both cases, the aesthetic is characterised by bold primary colours and muddle of typefaces. Its reminiscent of early mass produced packages, the sort of thing you might find in a corner shop or rural out-post. Its a reaction, I think, against the idea of companies as ‘brands’ that diversify into all manner of products. This aesthetic hints that there’s a good old traditional supply chain here, with a farm and a factory, that is bringing tangible produce to your local independent grocer’s store. Quite misleading, of course, but also delightful.
Quaker JUMBO oats make a lovely porridge
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Almost as soon as I echo the question “who are you writing for” then a prime example appears in the pages of the Observer Woman magazine. Rachel Cooke calls those obsessed with motherhood “boring, selfish, smug” and cites this piece of evidence:
Let me give you an example. The other morning, while I was thinking about writing this piece, I logged on to one of the dozens of websites now devoted to all things baby-related. The discussion subject of the day – email us! – was the funny ways kids mispronounce words. Really. To which I say: new mothers, by all means, tell your own parents, or a close friend, about how your son said the word “bottle” and made it sound like “bottom”. But don’t be incontinent. Don’t tell the entire world. Telling the entire world will make people, and not without reason, think that you have lost your mind.
Cooke’s false lemma here is to equate putting something on the internet, with, OMG, TELLING THE WORLD! Confessing something in an Observer column could be described in that way. Participating in an online discussion, while (technically) available for everyone to see, is something quite different. It is participating in a community, based around a shared interest. If the sites are appropriately labelled (and if they are called Alpha Mummy, Mumsnet, Babble, and MumsRock, then I would suggest that is the case) then the real mystery is why anyone without a child would go anywhere near them. They are narrowcasting, not broadcasting, and joining a discussion there does not equate to “telling the world” or the self-centredness that Cooke implies.
The Internet, with its millions of users and trillions of pages, carries fan and hobby sites for absolutely any human activity one can imagine, including knitting, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and foot fetishists. They might appear obsessed, but then any highly specialised conversation seems that way to an outsider. Since we only come into contact with these people when we see them online, we do not credit them with any other interests, other than what we read of their online thoughts. So it is with the parenting sites mentioned above: They are populated by a self-selected group of people, with a narrow remit to talk about one subject. They are not representative of a wider trend, any more than the so-called Dummy Mummies Cooke has apparently encountered at London social events.
Plenty of my friends now seem to use Facebook as a place to post pictures of their babies. Does that mean that they are obsessed? No more so than all my childless mates, who only ever post images from their holidays, or of weddings. We choose to only record certain things, tiny slivers of our lives. Thank God they don’t post pictures of themselves on the train, or worse, on the bog.
I wonder if either of my regular readers have noticed a subtle change to the way I’ve been posting recently? In the past, I’ve maintained fairly well defined barrier between my private life, and what I’m prepared to reveal online. In the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve let that slip. First, I drew attention to my Flickr account. An then I went the whole damned hog, and posted a link to video of myself online: Note on Modern Liberty. This in turn allows those who are prepared to click their computer mouse a couple of times, the chance to see family videos and the like.
In the past, I’ve been careful not to provide details of my social networking presence on the blog. This is not because I believe that in so doing, I can totally maintain my anonymity… for this is manifestly not the case. Rather, it is that a small degree of privacy is retained. If people want to know about me, they have to go out of their way to do so.
Furthermore, I had hoped that by refusing (until now) to put my face, or the comings and goings of my personal life online, I’ve built a bulwark against the cynics and the ignorant who seem to think that blogging is nothing more than narcissism (though ironically, this little bit of meta-blogging is pretty narcissistic). I can assert with some credibility that it is a much more outward looking project. Or its a scrap-book. Its not narcissistic to create a memento, even if its one for your thoughts.
(Now I think of it, I did put a bit of my face in a blog post once, but there’s nothing to note that its me).
So what’s changed? Well, I think it is seen as less geeky to have a blog, and to post messages to it. On the rare occassions on which I have to explain myself, it is increasingly my interrogator who comes off as out-of-touch, a luddite, lacking the imagination to see why I might find this sort of activitiy useful. Clay Shirky provides some usueful ammunition here – his lecture on “congnitive surplus” is the definitive smack-down to those who sneer “where do you find the time?” In Here Comes Everybody, he also explains how the question has shifted from “why publish?” to “why not publish?”
Second, I’ve noticed that even the biggest of bloggers allow some private moments into their public square. Jason Kottke recently posted a graph of his wife’s weight during her pregnancy, and Andrew Sullivan’s wedding photos are online. So I think disallowing my face from an little-trafficked, eponymous blog is probably unnecessary.
Finally, I’m struck by the idea of personal or organisational “channels”. I now produce YouTubes, podcasts, blogs and Twitters, all of which appear on Facebook without me ever having to actually visit the site. Its an experimentation in communication, self expression.