As I sit at the conference, I feel neurologically distracted by the need to rebuild my broken hard disk again. I feel like errant bits are jumping my synapses. My connection to my computer apparently has become organic.

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I just took a look at Denise‘s blog and so far she’s doing her usual superb job of live blogging.

We really need a list of who’s blogging. Not to mention an aggregation site. h

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Oy, I’m at another conference. At the moment, as it kicks off, I’m sitting next to The Doc. Michael Gartenberg, VP & Research Director at Jupiter Research, one of the conference sponsors. He says he’s nervous about talking to a group of live bloggers because we can catch him out, so he jokingly begins by saying “It seems to me that …” As Homer would say, it’s funny because it’s true.

Michael does a good job presenting what’s important about weblogging. And unlike what one might expect from an opening address to a business audience about blogging, he stresses the importance of voice, lack of spin, directness…

I’m going to try to avoid over-blogging this conference since the place is lousy with topnotch bloggers. I’m just not sure if I listen better by taking public notes or by listening. We’ll see.

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And if the simultaneous failure of my blog site and my desktop computer isn’t enough proof for you that the Apocalypose is nigh, Us Magazine of June 9 features the following headline on its cover:

Hollywood Wedgies

Run, run!

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I just spent 30 hours, broken by 4 hours of sleep, rebuilding my desktop computer after my boot disk melted. And now I have to do it all over again. I am sooooo depressed. (I’m writing this from my laptop.)

I replaced the bad boot disk with a 180GB monster from Western Digital for $130 after rebate. Big mistake. It requires an ATA board because it’s too big for Windows. But I already had an ATA board in because I have 3 drives and 2 CDs. After the usual couple of hours of trial and error, I got the thing up and running, partitioned into two pieces, one of which (a mere 50GB ) I couldn’t format.

After loading all my software (well, not quite all), rebuilding all the pieces, restoring from my 3 daily backups (yes, I’m totally paranoid), I was in pretty good shape and even managed to work on my keynote at the Jupiter Business Blogging conference tomorrow.

In fact, I was feeling so confident that I ran Partition Magic 8 to see if I could get those 50 pesky GBs formatted. As PM started, it told me that some cluster count was being misreported and did I want to fix it. Sure, I said.

Kaboom. The 180MB drive is completely hosed. I can’t even figure out how to repartition it at this point. PM’s boot disk won’t fix it. It’s a boat anchor. I’m totally at a loss. It’s even too late to go out and get another frigging drive.

I’m depressed. I can’t face another 30 hours of installing and tweaking software. And don’t tell me that this wouldn’t happen with a Mac you bastards.

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Thanks to Karl, my blog is working again. Woohoo! Thank you, Karl.

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Trevor responds to my response to AKMA‘s posting that was in part a response to my worrying about what the Web tells us about the importance of being embodied.

A quick recap (in order to get everything wrong or at least overstated). I said that since Web selves are so important and yet so disembodied, doesn’t this reinforce our alienated belief that bodies don’t matter? Trevor said that bodies aren’t primarily material: look at communal bodies. I replied that communal bodies, lovely though they are, lack something essential to embodiment. It’s not they’re immaterial (for Trevor and I agree that bodies aren’t just atoms…and Trevor has been helpful in clarifying my thinking on this, for which I thank him). It’s that they can’t have sex, feel pain, or die. Then I presented a four-step line of thought that allows me to hold the two beliefs I’m trying to coordinate: Our Web selves mirror (or shadow) the consequences of having a body in the real world, e.g., our perception is formed by the fact that we care about ourselves and our world, we have a point of view, etc.

In his latest entry, Trevor takes the four-part “argument” and applies it to communal bodies. It seems to me to fit well in some places and not so well in others. In particular, my way of caring about what happens to my body — the whole pleasure and pain thing — seems to me to work only in a metaphorical or extended sense for communal bodies. Sure, a communal body cares about what happens to it, but its pleasure and pain is way different from what I feel if I break a finger or come to orgasm. But, so what? Once we say that the essence of a body isn’t the atoms but what being embodied means to us, we can apply that to immaterial bodies like Web selves and communal selves. We just have to go back afterwards and remember the difference between enjoying a blog thread, finding satisfaction in improving the neighborhood, and having an orgasm. Forgetting that difference would be a real sign of alienated thinking.

Laura and Tripp, students of AKMA’s and Trevor’s, comment on my four-part argument from their faithful Christian perspectives, raising a whole bunch of deep questions that I am in no position to address but that sound spot on. For example, what’s the connection between voice and the Word? And what does incarnation mean, both for us mortals and for a particular carpenter born at the cusp of BCE and AD? Tough for a Jewish atheist-leaning guy to talk about.

Trevor has finished his first year teaching. I can tell from how he talks to students outside of the classroom, including how he blogs, that he is an inspiring teacher.

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The executive and managing editors of The New York Times resigned today “following more than a month of turmoil in the Times newsroom,” according to The Boston Globe.

Funny that turmoil in a real-world newsroom is a cause for resignation whereas turmoil in the distributed newsroom of bloggery is cause for celebration.

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And why would you think they are?

Answer: Because you read Simon Dumenco’s column in which he somehow fails to notice the difference. Or, more likely (and more to the point), you read Doc‘s comments on Dumenco’s column. There’s a germ of truth in what Dumenco says. And since he actually asks bloggers to tell him what he means, I’m happy to oblige.

He’s feeling overwhelmed by everything he’s supposed to know and think about. By TiVo-ing programs that he then doesn’t have time to watch, feels that he’s not entirely out of the cultural loop because the show is at least residing on his TiVo disk. Instead, he finds himself reading bloggery about what he didn’t have time to actually watch and so he’s able to engage in the water-cooler conversations.

But why is this a bad thing? The truth comes out a couple of paragraphs down: People read bloggery about Dumenco’s writing rather than reading the writing itself. He does not say (admit?) that this is insulting. Instead, he goes POMO on us and says that this is “interpassivity,” like a laugh track that decides for you what is funny. Worse, Dumenco says that TiVo and blogs:

up the ante so dramatically and seamlessly, that they create an entirely different sort of interpassive lifestyle, one that’s, well, hyperpassive.

There are only three things wrong with that idea. First, (as Doc points out) blogging is interactive, not passive. Second, even if you only read blogs and never interact with them, that makes blogs as “hyperpassive” as, well, the writings of a columnist. Third, his reasoning about the seamlessness of TiVo and blogs is hooey. He thinks that, unlike TiVo, unwatched video tapes “constantly taunt you, reminding you of their presence.” Yeah, but not nearly as much as the list of unwatched shows presented to you every time you turn on TiVo. (His real problem is ontological – he prefers “a physical collection of information” because it “exists” (his emphasis) – but we needn’t go there, girlfriend.)

TiVo is a response to the problem that there’s too much to watch. Rather than being hyperpassive, TiVo makes every person a monarch in the Kingdom of Couch Potatoes. Think of TiVo as being your own personal channel.

Blogging is a response to the problem that there’s too much for any one of us to think about. Conversation is the ur-response to the same problem. Aggregators respond to the next level of too-much-ness. Conversations, blogs and aggregators all “up the ante” not on passivity but on thinking together.

Dumenco’s last sentence asks: “Did you read this essay or did you read about it?” Maybe we didn’t have time to read the column. Or maybe I get more out of it by reading it via a thoughtful commentary like Doc’s that not only clarifies Dumenco’s thought but adds to it.

Meanwhile, I suspect the emphasis in Dumenco’s last sentence was supposed to be on about. Probably a typo. No problem; I make ’em all the time. Anyway, some blogger no doubt will read Dumenco’s writing closer than the editor did, and will notice the error and help make the column just a little bit clearer.

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Sure, Enron’s Ken Lay has escaped indictment for allowing his company to steal billions from its investors and turn its employees into paupers, but after a year of investigations we did manage to nab the pretty lady for selling 4,000 shares on a tip.

Totally irrelevant fact #1: Enron and its executives were the largest single contributors to W’s gubernatorial campaign, chipping in $312,500.

Totally irrelevant fact #2: “Enron was Mr. Bush’s biggest political patron as he headed into the 2000 presidential election.” And after the election, “Enron officials contributed $10,500 to his Florida recount committee, and when the recount was ended, they donated $300,000 for the inaugural celebrations”

Totally irrelevant fact #3: Bush has admitted lying about his relationship to Enron and Ken Lay: “White House officials had more extensive contacts with Enron executives in 2001 than previously disclosed, according to a document released by the Bush administration today in response to a request for information from a Senate committee.”

The Bush Policy initiated so successfully in the “War on Terrorism” has been extended to domestic policy: Villify and Distract.

Sigh.

Here’s a page that does nothing but list articles about corporate scandals from January 2002 on.

Chip points us to a Democratic Flash on how Bush’s tax cuts work out for the rest of us.

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