Dear David,
       I'm with you re-free space of both heart and mind and poetry's job
there.  But the space you describe as 'free' seems itself cluttered and
'managed' and commercial;  the space in short of the farting, swearing
non-white, non-bourgeois, non-male is now the space in large of
entertainment, of that is fiction, rock n'roll, film and tv, or rather this
is entertainment's idea of free or dangerous space, its straw woman. This
used to be the free space of poetry; how it has become a necessary part of
the culture as now managed is maybe an old story, but we need to keep up
with the latest versions of it. Poetry's freedom is exercised through
re-writing  the culture of which it is a part so that it can't or won't
recognise itself. That's awkwardly said but whatdo you say?
            Wystan


-----Original Message-----
From: david.bircumshaw [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 26 January 2001 10:36 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: filter coffee anyone?


Control, control, control, always control.

One of the most chilling things I ever heard was a guy on the radio
preaching the desirability of 'The Managed Society'. One of the desirable
linements of poetry to me, as a kid, was that it was an art-form that seemed
to inhabit an area that was outside the status and economics bound run of
the world, the mill. But of course I was naive then, however, I fortunately
remained so, and continue in the foolish notion of poetry as a kind of free
space of both heart and mind. But, again, that space seems to be shrinking.
In Britain we have hundreds of poets, poets of reputation, poets for every
day of the year. Yet so many of them seem to speak in the same voice. A
rather toneless accent, although vaguely middle-class. Vaguely male too,
even among the women. (Yes, I know there are exceptions, please don't tell
me).
The reason for this seems to be an ambience of group conformity in which
they practise, one in which fear of making a mistake is the dominant force.
Like a rather boring cheese-and-wine party. At which one must not fart,
swear, shout or enthuse. And the culture of criticism and review that
surrounds, supports, develops them, is even more imaginatively stunted and
intellectually enervate.
And everybody is watching everybody else.
Lists like this, and a certain Other List which may be known to some, are
among the very few public, open places of debate I know of in our culture.
To deliver them to moderation, to potential imaginary league-tables of
success, to made hierarchies of acceptability, is a sure way to that old
familiar shadow, the mainstay of the quotidian, and paradise regained of the
mediocre, Null and Void.

david bircumshaw


----- Original Message -----
From: komninos zervos <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 8:32 PM
Subject: filter coffee anyone?


> what do people think about a mediated discussion list that is organised
> this way?
> ie the lurkers have a chance to vote for posts, the posters would then
know
> how much the list agrees or disagrees with what they say, rather than just
> one or two pro-posters and anti-posters?
> komninos
>
>
>
> Web Sites Begin to Self Organize
> By KATIE HAFNER
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----
>
> SUZANNE CROSS, a 49-year-old paralegal in New Orleans with a passion for
> history, is a prolific writer for a Web site called The VinesNetwork,
which
> bills itself as "the Encyclopedia of Everything, Built by Everyone."
> Articles on the site, covering dozens of different topics, are all written
> by members.
>
> Since Ms. Cross began writing for The Vines last August, she has produced
> nearly 40,000 words about ancient Rome. Her nom de plume is Heraklia
Aelius
> and her lengthiest work to date, 18,000 words, is a series on the life of
> Julius Caesar.
>
> Ms. Cross knows her writing is valued highly by other members of The Vines
> (www.thevines.com). In fact, she knows exactly how highly she is prized,
> because they give her grades. They rate each of her articles on a scale of
1
> to 10. Ms. Cross consistently scores above 9.5, which puts her articles at
> the top of their category. As a result, she is featured more prominently
on
> the site than lower-scoring writers.
>
> The Vines and similar sites for writers operate not as conventional
> publications might, with dozens of editors deciding what to publish.
> Everything that is submitted is published, and then the members' tastes
> determine what articles you can actually find without burrowing into the
> site in search of that 0.5 article on someone's theory about other
> universes.
>
> "It's really hard to find the really bad stuff on The Vines, said Eden
Muir,
> a founder of the site. "It's designed to make the bad stuff disappear. It
> will be up for a little while, then it will sink like a stone."
>
> On the other hand, articles with the highest ratings bubble to the top,
and
> aspiring writers like Ms. Cross, whose articles have also attracted notice
> from the outside world, are enjoying a level of recognition that might not
> have been possible without the Web.
>
> The Vines is an example of an emerging class of what are called
> self-organizing Web sites. Such sites are demonstrating that with a dab or
> two of well-written code and a bit of careful planning, a site can take a
> random collection of links or posts and turn them into a sophisticated,
> adaptive system.
>
> Articles submitted to The Vines are read and rated by members. Software
> handles the rest, putting the highest-rated articles at the top of their
> respective categories. Royalties are based on the popularity of the
article.
> The Vines also holds periodic contests and awards cash prizes to the
writers
> with the highest standing, using the automated ranking system.
>
> "The Web in 1996 didn't need to organize itself," said Joey Anuff, who is
> editor in chief of a new self-organizing site called Plastic.com. "But we
> have a Web now that's measured in billions of pages and millions of users,
> so any kind of mechanism that automatically imposes order becomes more
> useful and important."
>
> Most efforts at self-organization so far have been fairly simple, but
> effective. Several features on Amazon.com, like the list of authors with
> books similar to the one being viewed, take what could be a random
database
> and develop relationships within it. The search site Google, which ranks a
> site depending on how many other sites have linked to it, is yet another
> example of self- organization at work.
>
> Sites for writers, like The Vines and others, are growing quickly, largely
> because of people's pent-up urge to pepper the world with their prose.
>
> The writers certainly aren't driven by money. Contributors to The Vines
and
> other self-publishing sites are paid a nominal fee. Ms. Cross has been
paid
> $50 so far for roughly 40,000 words. "Maybe someday it will amount to
> something," she said, "but I'm not planning retirement. I'm not even
> planning a dinner."
>
> More gratifying than the small payments is recognition from the outside
> world. On the strength of her articles on The Vines, Ms. Cross was
recently
> asked to contribute a chapter to a book on ancient Rome, to be published
in
> the spring by ibooks, a new imprint of Simon & Schuster.
>
> Carol Skolnick, a 43-year-old copy writer in Manhattan who focuses on
> spiritual topics, writes for ThemeStream (www .themestream.com), another
> writers' site. Ms. Skolnick has been asked to contribute four of her
> ThemeStream essays to the "Chocolate for Women" series of inspirational
> books, published by Simon & Schuster.
>
> Another ThemeStream author, A. M. Benneter of Seattle, who writes film
> reviews, noticed recently that her review of the Sylvester Stallone film
> "Get Carter" had been quoted in national advertising campaigns.
>
> Yet another ThemeStream writer, Laura Shanley, of Boulder, Colo., who
> specializes in health and nutrition-related topics, recently attracted the
> attention of television producers at work on a medical series. The
producers
> sent a film crew to interview Ms. Shanley. They were especially interested
> in two of her articles, "Cleanup on Aisle Nine: Woman Gives Birth in
Grocery
> Store" and "Milkmen: Fathers Who Breastfeed."
>
> There is also plenty of potential for abuse on the writers' sites. Recruit
a
> group of friends to award your writing four stars every 20 minutes or so
for
> a few days, and your work is bound to drift to the top of the heap.
>
> But Themestream and other sites have developed methods for identifying
> so-called click circles, which consist of people who work to inflate one
> another's ratings. "We look for people who exhibit certain
characteristics,"
> said Bill Turpin, a founder of ThemeStream. "We measure the time between
> when you load the page and when you rate it, and if you rate everything
> good, with no variability in your ratings."
>
> The reverse can happen, too. Richard Bossi, a 42-year-old freelance writer
> and former chef in Folsom, Calif., contributes food-related articles to
The
> Vines under the name ChefCayenne. His ratings are consistently high, but
> once in a while he will see one of his articles come under attack by what
> some Web writers call retalirators. "People will sink me to the bottom,"
Mr.
> Bossi said. "There's a lot of jealousy."
>
> Another form of adaptive Web site assigns ratings not to submissions
> themselves but to members' comments about the submissions. Slashdot, a
> three-year-old site for computer buffs that uses such a system, is the
model
> for the new site Plastic.com. Slashdot operates with a minimum of human
> intervention yet gives visitors the opposite impression.
>
> Articles sent to Slashdot (slashdot.org) are culled from the Web. After
> passing an initial test of suitability, administered by a Slashdot editor,
a
> contribution is posted, followed by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of
comments
> from the site's 305,000 users.
>
> Once you have established yourself as a seasoned Slashdot user, the system
> will periodically assign you "moderator" status, a temporary position that
> carries with it the right to rate other members' comments on a scale of 0
to
> 5. Users can then browse through Slashdot using a quality filter. With the
> filter set to 3, for example, a visitor will see only those comments with
a
> rating of 3 or higher.
>
> Slashdot members who receive high ratings also earn special privileges:
> their posts start out at a higher rating than usual, and they are more
> likely to be chosen as a moderator in the future.
>
> "This last privilege is a brilliant example of metafeedback at work," said
> Steven Johnson, the author of the forthcoming book "Emergence: The
Connected
> Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" (Scribner, 2001) and a vice
> president of Automatic Media, Plastic.com's parent company.
>
> "It's the ratings snake devouring its own tail," Mr. Johnson said.
> "Moderators rate posts, and those ratings are used to select future
> moderators." The most impressive aspect of the Slashdot system, Mr.
Johnson
> said, is that it not only encourages high quality in submissions to the
> site, but it also sets up an environment where community leaders can
> naturally rise to the top.
>
> "It's interesting and powerful and it really works," Mr. Johnson said,
> adding that only the Internet could give rise to such a system. "It allows
> large groups of minds to get together and interact in a way they could
never
> do before, in any other medium."
>
> Another self-organizing aspect of Slashdot is the fact that because nearly
> all of the site's content comes from its readers, its emphasis changes
> according to contributors' interests. "The subject matter we cover has
> changed over the last couple of years because what our readers are
> interested in has changed," said Jeff Bates, a Slashdot founder.
>
> Now, for instance, Mr. Bates said, the site carries far more articles
about
> civil liberties than it did two years ago. "It's not a decision we made by
> sitting down in a smoky room and saying, `All right, we're going to be all
> about civil liberties now,' " Mr. Bates said. "But we all agreed, in some
> kind of Jungian collective unconscious way, that that topic was a big
deal."
>
> Plastic.com, which made its official debut earlier this week, is very
> similar to Slashdot, but with a more general audience in mind. While
> Slashdot advertises itself as "News for Nerds," Plastic.com will cover
> politics, movies, technology, games, music and other topics.
>
> "We're trying to develop a system that can take the whole concept of news
> and figure out a way where the people who use the system can themselves
> decide what's interesting or not," said Mr. Anuff, who is also co-founder
of
> Suck.com, a popular online magazine. "The end result will be a
> community-defined front page."
>
> A still purer example of a self-organizing site is Everything2.com,
created
> a year ago by Nathan Oostendorp, 22, a Slashdot founder. Unlike Slashdot
and
> Plastic.com, which draw heavily on news stories found on the Web,
> Everything2 (everything2.com) more closely resembles writers' sites like
The
> Vines, because it links only to other links within the site.
>
> Yet Everything2 works far more autonomously than sites like The Vines. The
> Everything2 software monitors traffic patterns and modifies itself
> accordingly, assigning higher status to the more popular links. Users can
> also collect "experience points" and vote on one another's posts.
>
> "It's this soup where people can drop in any little bit of information
they
> want, like their favorite movies or directors or any other ideas," Mr.
Anuff
> said, "and the only things they can link it to is other people's ideas in
> the same soup."
>
> At first glance, Everything2 appears to be a chaotic jumble of random
> discourse. Look a little more closely, however, and you will see an
> intricately interconnected conversation, touching on topics as diverse as
> the languages of India, MTV and melanoma treatments.
>
> "It's not really about anything in particular," said Mr. Oostendorp, whose
> site has about 2,000 users a day. "The only thing that's there is the
> system. Here's an open database with these rules functioning, and if you
> come in and spend time on it, you can gain prestige and reputation within
> the system, and that's an attractor to a lot of people."
>
> Web sites with mechanisms for self-filtering, self-ranking and
> self-organization are very likely to continue to grow in number. "This is
a
> fundamental shift in the Web's evolution," said Mr. Johnson, at Automatic
> Media. "The first generation of the Web was individual interactivity. And
> now, after a period of distraction, it's getting back to the roots of the
> idea of interactivity." But this time, he added, the interactivity is
> collective.
>
>
>
>
>
> komninos's cyberpoetry site http://student.uq.edu.au/~s271502
> cyberpoet@slv site http://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/cyberpoet/
> komninos zervos, tel. +61 7 5552 8872
> lecturer in cyberStudies,
> school of arts,
> gold coast campus,
> griffith university,
> pmb 50, gold coast mail centre
> queensland, 9726
> australia.