'intent / attitude'
(being a number of unorganised, unordered and divers thoughts on this site)

If I were writing a traditional linear dissertation I guess the following would come at the end as opposed to the close proximity (one level down) that this page bears to the 'start.html' entrance.....

This site is a collection of ideas/experiences expressed in a non - linear format, as a hypertext, in other words in a way that is heavily feted as reflecting more truly the way that the human mind works (here for pointer/further detail).

.....well,what impression does this site make upon the reader? I'd be interested to know...

This site wishes to explore some ideas relating to the hype and reality of notions of interactivity, and make a few observations and some temporary conclusions. It is my hope that these pages will stimulate some thought and an occasional pointer to new ideas/sites and will perhaps provoke responses which I can add to my own, thus appropriately creating a degree of (snail-paced) interactivity. I also wish to acknowledge something that is pretty much taken for granted in hypertext and dealings with the 'net: that of interconnectedness. I have incorporated random exit points throughout this site to acknowledge the interrelatedness of the various subjects that make up the central theme - interconnectedness, the non - isolation of the individual's perception.

For me, the purchase of a computer has enabled me to actively respond to media which I was previously a passive receptor of. Granted, I had my own reactions of disgust, pleasure, boredom, etc but I could have no return effect on these media. Now with video, image and sound processing software, television, radio and magazines/newpapers have become raw material to be worked upon, adapted, re-edited, subverted, etc. Unfortunately, I'd get my arse sued off for defamation/copyright infringement if I were to publicly display some of these... but one of them can be downloaded below (2.6 mb self unstuffing StuffIt archive):

This practice extrapolated into the future.....

In either 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' or 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', I'm not sure which, the author Milan Kundera learns that his New York taxi driver is writing his autobiography and bemoans a world where everybody is shouting and nobody is listening - this view always struck me as one of supreme arrogance even coming from such a wonderful author. However, the new technologies are making it ever easier to originate content and providing more and more space to broadcast that content - from the software I use to the video camera I wish I could afford, from cable television to internet bulletin boards. On this point Michael Benedikt writes:

"...it is proposed that the creation of cyberspace is not only a good,
but necessary, and even inevitable step (1) toward providing the
maximum number of individuals with the means of creativity,
productivity and control over the shapes of their lives within
the new information and media environment, and (2) toward
isolating and clarifying, by sheer contrast, the value of un mediated
realities - such as the natural and built environment, and such
as the human body - as the source of older truths, silence of a
sort, and perhaps sanity."

('Cyberspace: Some Proposals' in 'Cyberspace, First Steps', MIT Press, 1991, p121-2)

This bears a semblance to David Toop's view of networked futures:

"Imagine the most likely use for the wired city of the future not
in cyberpunk or megatripolising world music frameworks then,
but as a hi-tech campfire, people plugging in to remind themselves
of life as it was when they were plugged out, twisting their
isolation into something resembling community."

('Ocean of Sound, Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds,
Serpents Tail, 1995, p89)

Michael Benedikt's observation in particular is staggering in its implication that the building of an alternative reality is necessary to appreciation of the current, physical one - can such a suggestion ring true to the linkage between clarity and perspective, a necessary distancing between subject and object, mind and body? David Toop:

"By vacating the body, losing the center in a web of
information (whether video game, electronic spectacle,
audio/visual immersion, dream/nightmare, global
information exchange or so-called plant consciousness),
the non-corporeal part of humanness begins to question
its own boundaries and to challenge the conventional
belief that consciousness is housed somewhere within
the head."

(Ibid, p110)

The initial motivation for exploring this issue was to fulfil the demands of my course structure, but in terms of feedback I am less interested in the grade I'm given than in discovering for myself and from other people's responses some kind of definition of the issues raised on this site.