we are still bounded in many ways by the limits of conventional language and are fucking around with tools that may in ways begin to leave those boundaries behind. here's perhaps a problem: new media is best thought of beyond linear language and distilled to return to it, this is being attempted by people who form the distilling ideas together via linear language.
makes me think of wrapping the moon in bubble wrap to keep it from getting bumped in transit.
(and demonstrate again how we try to use words to describe the silhouette of an idea that cannot be contained inside words. we have been at this for a while: we can communicate big things precisely with metaphors and transfer the experience from one human being to another. this isn't easy, never has been, but we are damn good at it. however it affects how we experience things. we record metaphor as experience and cast away much of the rest of the memory or even sensory data at the time. because we insist on incorporating the experience as a metaphor first we can pass that along ... and our transfer is very true. the metaphor is the thing in question.)
this is how media, any media, contains something bigger than it can.
here is a new media dilemma: the tools seem so big. they come out too fast, can do too much- why aren't we able to communicate much through it then? because (and this is my own off the cuff hypothesis for today, take as such) media is intended to communicate more than it can. no one is trying that with new media, since these tools feel bigger than our ever delicate metaphors... but that's all we had in the first place. it reminds me of the problem i had with every analog modem above 28.8- most copper can't do better. put a bigger push on one end, still it's a dribble on the other. that's a bottleneck, and you know why. effective communication of an idea involves carefully constructing it in another mind. you feel the halting of the modems, the idea of a "bottleneck" is clear, almost transcendent.
new media, like all media, is ultimately evolved to transcend. "let's see what this puppy can do" has been our attitude... but when a writer or a painter steps up to their old and banged around, often boring medium they have their challenge beaten into their head from the first time they suggest a desire to communicate to other human beings: "lets see what this puppy can't do"
back in 94/95 when i started with the web it was fun. It had been fun before that, but this is where I caught on. partly it was fun because we were painting inside such a tight canvas, and every time we found a way to cross the frame we could scream triumph. we exploited every part of this crusty scientific markup language to seek that elusive quality of experience in our sites. (few succeeded better than greenspun, imo, largely cause he held tightly to making sure all this new stuff in travels with samantha" tied back into conveying the trip. you know- it's ~5 years later and it's still compelling.) all were thinking what sort of nonsense can i try? to a certain degree we still do, but the new thinking is that if you can imagine a capability we can invent the tool and leave it lying in front of you. it's just too much. the tool user is left holding the bag, exhaustedly picking up a new tool and hitting it around once, lying aside on our pile of tools like the disused toys of a child with far too many... depressed by a simple lack of arms and time to swing.
it is an easy moment to blame the technology. it's crap. it's noise. look over here at this technology called writing that we've spent the mental energies of billions of people on til it is fine carved and explored and utterly brought to a point. we know it changes, but it is no accident that we can with little apparent training quickly distinguish good writing from bad. we have methodically and cooperatively built this dynamic entity. we eat this paradox with relative ease.. we are willing to tell each other the truth here. It is a safe cover to wrap experiences in- so that's still where we do it most. maybe it's not that other technologies are less capable, it's that they haven't won our trust yet.
on the flip side or being human, we are trying to push the limits: they are pushed. now without the limits we are without the art. limits create art, allow us to effectively communicate. they still show us the outlines of things. we are too inundated with toys to breathe effectively. we produce noise, and hope that art, or truth or even the old friend metaphor fall out by dint of sheer volume.
babble, babble, babble.