a few weeks back I started reading Sadie Plants' Zeros and Ones, after originally dismissing it as another breathless, impenetrable Internet rave when the review copy came my way in 1997.
now I'm quite enjoying it. she has a referential, sweeping style that doesn't try to explain where she's going, but does try to make it fun as you go; the connections emerge as you read (though I'm probably not getting them all).
she's on about the female side of computing, the influence of female ways and means in the development of networks, the secret influences and implications of the switch from linear to hypertextual, the impact of the zero itself in the binary world. it's all slightly trippy, but I am starting to get something from it.
at about page 130 (my hardback copy) she moves from the secretive nature of viruses (pointing out that the most successful computer viruses are probably ones we don't find) to multiple personality disorders, often suffered by women.
and I wonder about the Web and the Net and their potential for hosting multiple personalities. Plant quotes one personality of a multiple personality, complaining about how everyone wants them to "Integrate", protesting that would be a kind of death: "It means my (any of our) individuality doesn't count."
this is sort of what my Ratava idea is about; that the Web, by supporting multiple selves for a single body (ratava), actually increases/changes the possibilities for that ratava. A ratava isn't just a body, it's a body in relation to a set of digital identities (avatars).
in the way that photography changed painting, electronic identity is changing what it is to be.
whew. all tired now from that big think. might go cross-post this at ratava. really feel I'm getting close to working out what it is I want to say/study/learn/teach.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin.
my source being a 1962 National Geographic I picked up the other day.
just something to think about as the focus is on stopping terrorists, not protecting the wider public's rights. not to say that things shouldn't be done. just that we ought to be thinking very carefully about their real effects.
at the dreaded panel, the Vic. Privacy commissioner said something clever; that laws brought in during hard times should at least have sunset provisions, so that when the immediate danger is over, we can stop and think about whether we really want to live with them; things like increased surveillance, greater police rights to search.
so I now have to go sit on a platform with the Victorian Privacy Commissioner (who was my law lecturer in journalism school), a marketing type and an emergency services type, and try to be entertaining about privacy, GPS and emergency medical treatment.
oh dear. have volunteered to speak at a mapping conference on a panel.
it will be a hypothetical about GIS systems (geographic(ly based) information systems) and their impact on privacy.
I will be the token journalist. I am interested in this stuff, but I hope they don't expect any facts from me. I'm good at opinion and random, inaccurate recollection of something I read somewhere.
maybe I need to do some homework.
Deanland describes a great campaign against selling people's personal information.
which reminds me: the Commonwealth Bank refused to give me a Visa card. I complained and demanded they tell me why (I suspect they have some Wrong Data)
the card came through within a fortnight. I am still waiting on the full disclosure of the info they hold on me.
I've submitted the word "ratava" to pseudodictionary.com, which will have to do until the real dictionaries get with the program. but the site won't link to here, it will link to my more interesting blog at Bloggety Blog
for the purposes of work - I'm thinking of writing an article about the new Australian privacy laws - I'm going to try to write down every piece of annoying junk that my data avatar attracts to my poor harried ratava. I'll intermittently post it up here.
Jenny's junk mail and calls diary - four weeks from Sep 10 - October 14
Am I typical? Probably not. Several months ago I submitted every variation of my name and contact points - email, phone, addresses - I could think of, to the Australian Direct Marketing Association's "do not call, do not mail" list.
I've asked my bank to stop sending me material that's not strictly necessary, and to tell its partners to do the same.
But still the calls, letters and emails keep coming.
Tuesday Sep 11: Come home just before 9 to find a number on the caller ID on the phone. Someone phoned about 7.30, but there's no message. I call the number. When a woman answers, I ask what the organisation is: she says they are calling people looking for inventions they can market. I ask to be taken off their list and she replies
they don't use a list, they use the White Pages. So I tell her that I don't want them calling me, regardless, and she hangs up.
When I call back and ask for an address, company name and contact person, she asks "what's this regarding?"
Feeling a little annoyed and wondering why I'm bothering I say, fairly sharply, "you called me" and she hands over the details.
Mon Sep 17: Spam count on my Hotmail account since September 14, when I last emptied the Junk Mail folder: 40. I've had this account for five years. I'm fond of it. So are the spammers.
I get an email at work from the union; they're using email to put out a regular bulletin. By hitting "reply", I get a list of about a hundred email addresses; excellent material for spam lists. I reply, asking them to use a blind cc: next time.
obliquely related to the theme of this blog is a blog of note on privacy, full of links to news about online and offline privacy laws.
I guess the ratava thing is partly about privacy; I see it as being bigger, more about control of one's cyber-self in a world where there are such powerful data forces. by defining your ratava, you can control what happens to your avatar. or something. my essay says it better.
Wired ran this article about new-style ID cards a few months ago (yes, I just got around to reading it). I like the one that takes a drop of blood for signing documents (where "like" denotes a kind of horrified thrill).
trying to get my site to look better and to put my stupid essay up has cost me two hours, tears, a neckache and my sanity.
it's here now and now all I have to do is work out the code to make this blog appear on my site.
why?
things to do list: submit URL via sitemeter's submission engine, which seems to have generated some traffic on my other blogs. submit to dmoz because it's a cool idea.
email the couple of academics who have used this word and ask them if it's still in common use.
get a decent template.
URL update: melbourne IT demanded that my details be exactly the same on my request before they'd let go of ratava.com. but it's coming through soon. then this blog will be the discussion area/place for thoughts and notes for the site currently at ratava.net there will also be links to references to the word ratava, and lots of my cyber-related uni essays and all that.
any minute now ... don't be impatient, I've got two other blogs, an email habit, a uni essay and a writing job to feed. sometimes I feel like a a word-cow.
there is a reason I am delighted that there is a butterfly of "Range: Sikkim, Assam - Burma, N.Thailand" called R. j. ravata (Moore)
Remelana jangala ravata ; [BOR], 618; [MRS], 648, even though I don't know what those numbers mean (they're here) it's that Vladimir Nabokov, a writer who didn't write, but sang, was a keen lepidopterist.
I know it's a cruel hobby, but I can forgive the author of Lolita a lot.
(edit: I've just realised its raVata, not raTava. but I'm leaving it in b/c of Nabokov.)
I've now PAID for ratava.net and transferred ratava.com to a registrar with URL forwarding. so as soon as that comes through, I'll attach this blog to those URLs with the magic of forwarding. then maybe someone will visit me. sniff
OK, now I'm offended. I'm being ignored by the WHOLE INTERNET. So I'll do what anyone else would do in this situation, but honestly: I'll go steal something to get attention. Back soon....
Well then ... I was the girl in the purple sleeveless top rolling her silver bracelet around and around her arm while she talked.
While we were driving home in the rain I looked over at a woman in an open-sided Moke and said "She's got an ashtray as big as the planet" - while her ash blew along the road.
W-w-w-welcome to ratava.
How's your avatar today?
I've been thinking about this online/offline thing for a while; this blog is for you. There are rules (as always) - two paragraphs only, and no cheating with long ones - describe yourself and something you did recently - interesting, weird, illegal, inane, whatever.
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