I'm just saying... I have no idea what this place will end up being about, but I have some thoughts. The first bunch of thoughts I had were around business and how maybe this could be a place where they'd be so engaged by how fricking brilliant our ideas are that folks from "out there" would join us all "in here" thereby erasing more of the boundaries between us and them.

Then the whole girlism v feminism thing blew up, and then Elaine and I get an email from a man wanting to join blog sisters and saying he's sure we don't practice reverse discrimination, to which I wrote a rather intelligent and well-thought-out reply, which I won't bore you with here. But one of the results in my urging him to participate with women online was to urge him to participate "HERE" on this blog. (He is a good guy--he wasn't just trying to bait us into an argument, although, he did waste an hour of my billable time I had to make up later.)

While Blog Sisters is a place for women, open to comments, pointers, and even our sharing emails (with their permission) from men on that blog, posting privileges belong to the women building that place as their own, our own. I never meant it to be the only place on the web. It's just one little place. There are lots of other places.

Like here, for instance. Where we're humans first.

Not men or women first. Not black or white or variations thereof first. Not stay-at-home mothers or childless-by-choice first. Not liberals or republicans first.Not lawyers or doctors or homeless guys first. Yes, as this place grows the folks here may be any or all of those things, but FIRST we're just a group of human beings talking to each other and the world in one place. That's all really.

If we come at Humans First this way--regardless of what we're tackling, saying, ranting about, etc.--then I don't think we can go wrong.

Am I making a lick of sense here?  ¶ 10:08 PM

  Essence vs Accidents In college, as part of a course in comparative religion, I remember a discussion of the Catholic belief that during the Mass, the wafer is transformed into the body of Christ. The professor explained that the belief is really that the "accidents" of the wafer remained the same (the color, texture, taste etc. -- which always made me gag, btw) but its "essence," its essential nature, didn't.

As an aside, that's the difference between feminism and girlism. Feminism says focus on the essence (admirable human qualities) of a person rather than the accidents (looks, weight, religion, race etc.).

It's the essence, not the accidents, of all of us that should be why we are respected, admired, employed, served, loved. Maybe we need to start a new human movement called "essentialists."

This thinking was triggered by a post on Blog Sisters by Brooke Biggs, who works for Anita Roddick who founded The Body Shop and who recently went "undercover" as a "fat person." Her story and comments are revealing, both for her humanity and her approach to serving her customers.  ¶ 7:32 AM

  Ignorance is combustible I'd like to go on a slightly different tack from Kevin's, though evidence of humanity in corporate spheres is always a rara avis worthy of curious attention. The thng is, I think there is a sort of growing gap between the technoids and, well, me, for example, a technically rather lame and ignorant end-user. Corporations not only fail to really know how to talk to folks like me, they also need to learn how to behave properly - i.e., within what anyone might recognize as a human ''social contract.'' The lack of manners becomes truly oppressive when the product is something like code, software, which can do stuff regardless of whether we understand it or not.

Thus, we get Microsoft, for example, auto-updating its software - adding little goodies that potentially compromise our privacy and autonomous control - and not bothering to tell us before the auto-update takes place. This is arrogant behavior - cluelessness not just in speech, but in action. The fact that networks have put us in close proximity to these giant coding machines makes it all the more necessary that some expectations of how to behave be acknowledeged by all parties. By not telling us stuff, they are keeping us in the dark. So we light a candle to see what's going on, and communicative arson occurs.

My initial rough thought: Draw up a new techno-social contract - an embracing, shared understanding of what is expected of very powerful corporations with regard to relating to very small, often technically unschooled, end-users. The geeks need our help, in part because they really can't imagine how little we know, and what our questions and concerns are. I have put something about this here - very rough. I would appreciate any comments. (Kevin, you have written so much on this subject that what I'm saying there might be redundant - if so, please point me to the relevant places.) All thoughts welcome.
  ¶ 11:32 AM

  unexpected acts of humanity I'm posting stuff about finding human voices wihtin corporations. Not sure if that was what Jeneane had in mind, but they seem to fit together and fit here better than my blog.

The goal should be to form the right kind of group, the kind Gladwell describes here   ¶ 1:41 AM

  Remind Me Fellow Humans Okay, I'm over here now. Home from the holidays. Now what the heck are we supposed to write about here? If it's about humans -- we have a bunch of those here in Boston tonight -- problem is, they're all frozen solid, it's so damned cold.   ¶ 3:30 PM

  Viva voce Cory points toLiterary Devices, a short story by Richard Powers.
It's well written, and worth reading. I'll wait while you do....


...OK then The problem with it is the author's barely-masked contempt for any real writing online, in his pursuit of the chimerae of dead literature mediated through AI. Had he connected with other living writers online, he would have realised that their conversations were what he was missing, rather than the simulcra he found. The implication at the end that we cannot tell stories except in person, and that new media cannot help at all is so wrong that it jars the rest of the piece.

Rageboy's attempts at failing the Turing test are funnier too.  ¶ 12:19 AM

  Googly speaking

On a related note: Jonathan Peterson notes the google reflection of interest in voice:

Chernin's speech was heard by hundreds of people in the hall, and was fairly widely reported by both technology and mainstream press. But Google's link weighting algorithms and blogs have pushed my commentary above the mainstream press. Part of the reason people linked to my piece was because it was both contrarian and researched (unlike any of the "journalistic" articles), but I think part of why Google works in such a democratizing fashion is that we are more likely to link to something written with a human voice, instead of just another pre-digested speech summary.

Something here is encouraging - the levelling power of Google, radical in itself, converging with the attractive power of the human voice.
  ¶ 9:23 PM

  Writing in your own voice Orson Scott Card says:
Every writer -- no, every human being -- has a distinctive voice, which emerges when we speak and, with luck, when we write. In certain kinds of writing -- process writing, for instance, and legal writing, and highly formal discourse -- such quirkiness needs to be held under control, or even completely submerged. That is the only value of such guides as Elements of Style, which is often touted as a writer's guide to "good style," but which in fact is utterly useless to writers of fiction; no, worse than useless, because it tears the soul out of phrase, sentence, and paragraph, leaving only a lifeless skeleton behind.

Fiction writing is the opposite of these. The living voice of the individual author needs to be heard; the reader is hungry for it, and delights in the music of it. However, a contradictory force is also at work: The reader wants to be guided through the story so as to be able to follow what happens and why without confusion or uncertainty. The author's rhetoric, therefore, must be employed in such a way as to achieve the latter purpose -- clarity -- without killing the individuality of his style.

Unfortunately, what happens in many, perhaps most, creative writing courses is that the students are encouraged -- or encourage each other -- to exaggerate or artificially simulate the individual voice quite at the expense of clarity, so that the reader is left perplexed, confused, unguided through the mapless landscape of the fictional universe. All that the reader is given is a voice, but one without content, as if someone were singing in your ear in a language you didn't understand. Very pretty, but after a while you start longing for some content.

read the rest of this article for how
  ¶ 1:22 AM

  Humanity invades commerce Nip over to the Speccie and read how serendipitous untidyness can provoke random acts of humanity.

PS Can we turn on RSS for this blog?   ¶ 12:11 AM

  Euen and Tom Make Sense Yes, this makes good sense. To talk from our humaness. I like that. We do that on our individual blogs, some of us. What will make this different? That we're joined here? I mean, could it be, now that most of us here "know" one another, that we hang out here like we're at our blogger place in the woods and just relate? Hey, I really like that...

and... yes, Marek, Norwegian fjords...



somehow that is a fitting symbol.

When I was growing up, I had horses. I loved my horses, and although I never owned a Fjord pony, the Fjord was a symbol of sturdy steadfast determination. Still is:



Swimming your horse in Lake Ontario, riding bareback through the trails in the park, soaked blue jeans sticking to his back, getting bucked off and having the wind knocked out of you, these are all generally more human experiences than we engage in at work. No doubt.

So I'm for human first discussions here. I'm for whatever we want to do. I've already learned a lot from the posts of the past week. Keep em coming. We'll gel. We always do.



  ¶ 9:32 AM

  Walking the talk Tom wrote "What if talk about corporations, technology and other inhuman things simply evades the human. I was thinking the proposition here is to talk about human things." and I have to agree.

When Jeneane included me in this group blog I felt slightly uneasy and I wondered why. Then I remembered the saying that "what you resist persists" and something about Mother Theresa saying that rather than being fiercely anti-war she'd rather be fiercely pro-peace. If we want to make the web a more human space, place, thingy (sorry David W) then surely we do so by being different in here than we would be in the "real" world.

What about making this group blog a place where we celebrate and articulate the way we want to be rather than focussing on other people or the way we don't want to be?  ¶ 3:58 PM

  Humans First At Last Thanks for the invitation. I have not written anything in a while. A bit rusty, or a bit less human maybe in my ability to explore the reverberations of the space I find myself in among the humanity of humans. Late last night I have managed to play the keyboard and write crazy stuff at Gonzo Engaged. Like I said, a bit rusty.

Since we are talking about Humans First I would like to thank Norwegians. Fabulous people those Norwegians are. For every $1 an American is willing to invest in Foreign Aid a Norwegian gives $17. I love those Norwegians already. They are the champions for Humans First and as far as I know they don't have any Bomb Factories. I would like to be a Norwegian, they have fjords. I think that is a blessing to have fjords. A place where you could explore the partnership between Earth and Sea. You don't know where one ends and the other begins. It's like there is this No Man's Land. Neither belonging to Neptune nor Jupiter. A place of not knowing. A place of exploring.

Speaking of No Man's Land there is a movie about it made by Danis Tanovic. Danis is 33 years old. It's his first movie. He wrote it. He got an Oscar for it. Most people don't know about his movie. Please promote it. Well, I recommend you watch it too. The movie is about Humans First. I also hightly recommend an interview with Danis. He talks about reasons for making movies and being a journalist - about being a hero he says this: "In war everybody is a hero. Just being there is heroism. That yee-ha kind of heroism just doesn't exist. Just in your imagination and in infantile movies. Nobody jumps and shoots. It does not exist, except in your wildest dreams".

I like Danis a lot. He is not a hero. I don't like heros. I like Norwegians. Danis is like a Norwegian for me. With fjords and all. Maybe in No Man's Land we are all Humans.
I will tell my mom that she is a Norwegian for me. My hero Norwegian. She has given so much. I want her to have fjords in her life.
Peace
Marek J
  ¶ 2:21 PM

  Close Call

Andy Bourland, founder of Click Z, has reportedly had a close encounter with the Grim Reaper. Andy suffered a massive heart attack earlier this week, but managed to survive and is recovering from open-heart surgeryat his home in Andover, Mass.

Andy was one of the first to be clued-in about humans-first marketing principles on the Internet. His influential newsletter. ClickZ, was a pioneering force in elevating and guiding the online marketing conversation. It’s lost a bit of its zip since Andy sold it to Internet.com last year, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of his contribution in the developing days of the Net.

Best wishes to Andy for a speedy recovery. For those who would like to send a card or note, Anne Holland, another clued-in internet marketing voice, has provided Andy’s e-mail and snail mail addresses: 39 High Street, Andover, MA 01810 or andy@bourland.com
  ¶ 12:24 PM

  What is human? What if talk about corporations, technology and other inhuman things simply evades the human. I was thinking the proposition here is to talk about human things. Give the inhuman a rest. Here's a human thing: boredom. Ennui. acedia. Spleen. taedium vitae. It is a great teacher and rewards study. If humans saw more deeply into ennui, perhaps they would have less tolerance for that which kills the spirit.  ¶ 10:02 AM

  Haloscan seems popular these days? Moxie's got a slam dunk if you ask me (that's meant as a humorous rejoinder, of course, not an assessment of her undoubtedly iron clad legal footing). I'd be thrilled to represent her; talk about a high profile client!  ¶ 9:16 AM