RE: Syndicate: this flocks of netgulls

["Sally Jane Norman" <norman@wanadoo.fr>]

Dear Syndicalists

As someone who won't be in Plovdiv but remains a syndicate subscriber,
albeit a bit of a lurker at times, my off-the-cuff strictly subjective
feelings about the list right now, for what they're worth...
Sure it's changed and fortunately so. Nostalgia for kinship felt at the
list's early days is best countered by honestly reviewing which people met
at that time I'm still in touch with, directly or perceptibly through this
or another list. Whatever the list has turned into, there's nothing
preventing me from hooking up with contacts it enabled me to establish - and
which no other list could have provided. If syndicate had remained as it
was, it would be a worrying piece of inertia. Not a particularly dynamic
feature for a so-called community.
The noise is perhaps irritating at times but healthy - preened no-noise
discussion rhymes with bland consensus: we're all talking the same way about
the same things. Pitie! Human dialogue presupposes identities whose
"differance" (un-French people seem to find it chic to be deleuzian, so I'll
throw that one in for free with all due respect and consideration for the
fatally radical way this philosopher condemned WINDOWS) makes the sparring,
the exchange, worth engaging. Being drawn together by a loose (not sloppy,
just undefinable) nexus of interests and empathy is I think appreciable.
If/when strong "differances" (or contrariwise "correspondances") make
themselves felt, conflict also testifies to something living and worth
getting steamed up about (life being the sum of the forces that combat
death, according to Pasteur). This probably comes across as a bunch of
home-made truisms, an "ok philosophy" perhaps dangerously cose to the "ok
art/ist" Rafa Lozano threw into the ocean a few weeks ago (nettime/
syndicate). Even if I've found verbal violence on the list a pain at times,
its absence would imply a dangerous state of wilful sedation. The nice list
for the nice people. Yuk. Heated personal discussions about geographical and
political stakes I'm physically very safely removed from bring home certain
points that other media can't. Again, subjective stuff: I need this
environment for purely personal reasons, for a certain quality of relational
immediacy to people otherwise impossible to hang out with. Not nettourism -
except for those who qualify any kind of social exchange as a kind of
gratuitous cultural tourism.
So if billboarding is on the rise, what the hell. Larger group = useful
platform for spreading the word about what people are up to. Inevitable.
Entropy/ neguentropy.
Not keen on moderation, personally. Just look at all the angry - and
unjustified! - attacks syndicate managers have had to deal with over the
years, accusations of censorship for what indeed remains an open,
non-moderated list. What kind of virtual pillory would real censorship put
them in? People being too clever all the time (look mum no hands), or too
gray-haired philosophicomoral, or whatever, give the list/ community its
momentary connotations/ colours. They change like a cameleon. The
non-time-bound, non-theme-bound dimensions of syndicate strike me as
important e.g. if we compare it with certain kinds of cultural fora
mushrooming on the net. Thematically focussed with a strange -
contradictory? - desire to conciliate spontaneous net participation spiked
by well-timed catalytic input of big-name signatories. The result being that
the membrane between the two types of contributions - sollicited
(commissioned) and spontaneous - remains basically impermeable. The big
names generally don't bother responding to anonymous small-fry, their "duty"
being done once they've thrown in their duly counted words of wisdom. Which
of course considerably enhance the post-forum publication... Of course some
interesting stuff comes out of such encounters, but what I find most
intriguing is their social mechanics - the artifices used to put them
together. Indicative of new attempts to forge online "stake-holder" groups.
Whereas syndicate's stakes reside in a certain openness - difficult to
maintain, decidedly un-ok (for you, Rafa with love!) at times. But despite
all this, there's something of the initial ideology that seems to weld and
make it hold together - whatever that was. What was it, Andreas? Cultural
issues, openings onto Central and Eastern Europe? V2-East way back when?
Maybe I'm a complete idiot, but this is the flavour I can still taste in the
list and that keeps me on it.

Sorry to note there'll be nobody from France (or Aotearoa - Honor, m'dear
are you webcast or just plain netted?) in Plovdiv. But please take this open
ramble from Saintonge as expression of a personal need, hopefully probably
one amongst umpteen, for this kind of list.

We're not a list of names. We're a list of people.

kia ora

sjn

ps - netgulls strike a resonant chord, seafarers bow to the tides, to the
breathing of the deep housed ocean monster Te Parata. Something between
surfer and driftwood. The environment is much bigger than me and I be-long
to it.



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