My Blog Synchronizing with Me

by phil on Monday Feb 2, 2004 11:25 PM
blog as self, blogging, synchrony

At some point in the future, Philosophistry could be so completely reflective of who I am that a critical point is reached. This would be a point whereby me and my blog are perfectly synchronized. At this point, my mental and physical health can be observed in both the real world and through my blog. For example, right now I'm under physical duress thanks to weekend reverly and torrential rains. Likewise, visiting my blog over the past few days only shows basic parts of my site being updated, like the link bar above, the away message, and the artist bar. My last main post was also short and a posted a while ago. In tandem, the BlogFabric above has been stagnating a bit and the site's overall quality is less than excellent.

Synchronoy, like harmony, is an interesting phenomena to occur between objects. In the book Sync I've been learning how inanimate objects naturally obtain synchrony, such as pendulums keeping pace, binary stars having stable rotations, and water molecules freezing up simultaneously. It's even conjectured, that synchrony is the essence of self-assembling mechanisms, such as the spontaneous generation of life on Earth.

So to relate this to the web, if my blog moves in perfect step with myself, then we have achieved harmony. But if small perturbations in me or my blog are automatically reflected in the other medium, then synchrony has been achieved.

Blogging is part of a tradition of web extensions for human experience. Since 1990, new tools have been developed to act as surrogates of existing human faculties: Google as the surrogate brain, Instant Messaging as the surrogate mouth, and eBay as the surrogate hand of resource exchange. Blogging appears as the surrogate face of personal identity. Through every post you are saying to the world, "this is me, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm about." Blogging becomes an alternative or simulated existence for the person.

Eventually, the simulation could become too real. The simulation becomes a simulacrum, which according to Baudrillard, is a copy without an original. At this critical point, the blog's initial frame of reference, you, has disappeared, and author and content have become one.

// Like I said, I'm a little out of sorts, and hence, I apologize for this post's incoherence.

Comments

Bob said on February 5, 2004 9:00 AM:

I prefer to keep the blog as an assitive device, rather than a reflection of identity. I agree that it maps quite well onto the human body, though, which is why I titled mine the "Backup Brain"...

But the beauty of this emerging online world is that you can present something as whatever you like. There are no rules yet, explicit or implicit, and so kudos to your design abilities for being able to reflect your personality in CSS and HTML.

Personally I think that if I were to create my "face of personal identity" I would want to do so with less limiting and more expressive tools than code. But since I haven't yet, I suppose my default face is my blog. D'oh!

Venetia said on May 23, 2004 12:20 PM:

Computer security recourse: :Secure Root: