I think my biggest problem with Flock is that it connects the aspects of my digital life too much. I removed my Flickr feed from my blog because I don’t want my students and colleagues and neighbours to find my photos. I use del.icio.us for links that I’m happy for the world to see - if it’s integrated with my browser, I’m going to need an option for private links as well.
I'm Jill Walker Rettberg, an associate professor at the University of Bergen, and I do research on how people tell stories online. I'm affiliated with the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies. I've been a research blogger since October 2000.
I'm usually best contacted by email.
earlier archives: 2003 february : january
2002 december : november : october : september : august : july : june : may : april : march : february : january 2001 december : november : october : september : august : july : june : may : april : march : february : january 2000 december : november : october
June 2008: Blogging, a book by Jill Walker Rettberg, published by Polity Press. (Table of Contents)
May 2008: Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, co-edited by yours truly and Hilde G. Corneliussen, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
Browse my other publications on electronic literature, electronic art and weblogs. I also enjoy speaking in public, for general and specialised audiences, and I've posted summaries of many of my talks and presentations to the blog.
Powered by WordPress
October 24th, 2005 at 11:04
So, Jill, you’ve felt the shive of what I like to call the “Apocalypse of Total Communication”?
Have a look at this, another shiverer:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, aech straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” (Opening words of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”, 1926)
October 24th, 2005 at 11:05
Oops, “shiver”. ¡Shiver!
October 24th, 2005 at 11:13
that’s probably the sensitive point about all these new concepts of integrating things… As William Gibson used to write (guess it was in “idoru”, though I’m not sure…): looking at a network, we see that someone is “alive” merely by the fact that he/she is a vital node creating amounts and amounts of information for us to see what he/she is up to, how he/she feels, lives, thinks, works. and we get a pretty clear picture. we even know when someone, well, dies - that’s when this node in the network stops producing information. guess there need to be some more serious talks about secrecy, about privacy and “trusted” computing way beyond technologies like tcpa, drm and the like. people need to be able to trust the machines they use for their daily life…
October 24th, 2005 at 17:51
I agree especially with the last point, Jill — I couldn’t believe it that Flock really just offers the choice between publishing none of my favorite links and all of them. I’m not even using that many bookmarks, but this is a show-stopper.
October 26th, 2005 at 09:59
… you could always choose not to tag the favourites..? This will not put them on del.ico.us, and you could sort them as regular bookmarks, or collections.
I agree that Flock is incomplete, and that the integration of the different elements isn’t working optimally. But Flock is not even in beta yet. I think this a step in the right direction; I’d love an interface that would gather as much of my social stuff as possible; this is what I do when I’m online, I really don’t relate to the metaphors of surfing, crawling or navigating.