[Air-l] hmm,thinking about internet stories
jeremy hunsinger
jhuns at vt.edu
Fri Mar 22 12:10:59 PST 2002
This could be done as a wiki too, perhaps as part of the wikipedia
project. but for me, i am less actually interested in the facts of the
history, I am much more interested in the stories, true or not, that we
tell about that history. I think that when I give my 15 minute internet
history, I tell certain short parts for certain reasons to certain
people and not to others and i give certain spins to various groups.
This is the creation of the fictions, supported by some construct of
the events, that really intrigue me. It is the fictions of the canon
that tell the story about the disciplines, not the canons themself.
Some stories i tell are:
"the invention of packet switching"
this one is a standard short history story that i usually tell on
the fly
"the history of the undernet or what it means to talk to someone in
taiwan in real time along with 20 other people"
this centers around my experiences during the early years of the
undernet irc network, and my experience being myself in a wide
variety of roles, channel manager, participant, being banned, etc. etc.
"finding myself on the web; egosurfing and search engines"
how many of you tell the story of when you first found information
about you that you did not create on a page?
there are other stories, this is just a short list, there are probably
100 or so that i can tell for various reasons.
i tell them because i find they point to some aspect or another about
the current discussion that I'm in, not so much about the truth of
history, but about understanding situations, and events.
It is sort of like the difference between listening to Utah Philips
versus reading a book about the labor movement, the sense of the event
is different in the spoken story, whether it happened like that or not.
>
> This tool has proven to be valuable for its intended use, and the
>empirical studies of the results form an important part of my
>dissertation. There is a demo version that is allows use of every
>part of the system except the actual posting of commentary.
>
>http://students.washington.edu/~veritas/DocReview/review30.cgi?name=DrDemo
>
--
jeremy hunsinger http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
cddc/political science http://www.cddc.vt.edu
526 major williams hall 0130 http://www.dromocracy.com
virginia tech -under construction
blacksburg, va 24061
540-231-7614
this email was sent from my office
More information about the Air-L
mailing list