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I will be Opening Comments on this Blog

by Ben Atlas on 03.4.2010.8:14pm · 0 comments

All the Top Ten Reasons I Closed Comments on this Blog are still intact. But there were some real encounters in the past month that made me realize that you got to put up with all the rotten sardines because occasionally you might catch or miss a golden fish. I think I am mixing up the metaphors but you get the point. And if you don’t have your net out there, etc… Perhaps this is how life works not just the comments? I still nurse my standing lament about not being able to have a real off-line connection even with the steady commentators. I  still deplore the anonymity in the comments but my lone protest will not change the entrenched culture. See above about the rotten sardines or sheep to be more accurate.

In addition there were some technical reasons, I couldn’t find a commenting platform to my liking, I am picky. But it looks like there is resolution to the technical problems in sight. At least there is promise dangling out there for the imminent release. And my email still works as always.

The Decline of Blogging and Commenting

by Ben Atlas on 02.9.2010.9:09am · 0 comments

Nick Carr puts an exclamation point on the Pew Study, he writes Blogging: a great pastime for the elderly:

“…blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet. It’s even uncooler than editing Wikipedia articles or having a Second Life avatar. In 2006, 28% of teens were blogging. Now, just three years later, the percentage has tumbled to 14%. Among twentysomethings, the percentage who write blogs has fallen from 24% to 15%. Writing comments on blogs is also down sharply among the young. It’s only geezers – those over 30 – who are doing more blogging than they used to.”

There are structural problems with blogging namely the value of authorship, the cut and paste aggregators pretending to be blogs, the mob rule of the anonymous comments, most importantly the decline of value due to the faulty monetization models that favor quantity over quality.  But certainly teens are not spending less time online, instead they preoccupy themselves with the Facebook statusphere and that is a horrible place to publish, relate or express individuality within a prison-like, predetermined grid (do listen to Jaron Lanier on this). People often say that we now read less, but we know that actually we read more syllables all the time, the question is what are we reading instead or in addition to.

A Virtual Community is an Oxymoron

by Ben Atlas on 02.5.2010.10:30am · 0 comments

Every single thriving online forum is an outlet of a community or an interest that already exists off-line. People who like a certain team, etc. naturally extend the actual interest, a hobby into a virtual community. So the online forums are the reflections of the ideological, religious or national tribes. Online forums complement a niche but they never create a niche (some idiots who claim there are no communities online, they are blind to the fact that online communities only mirror real social and ideological groups).

The cutting edge ideas or the proverbial out of the box thinking gets little traction on the internet. People seek distraction and confirmation not an intellectual disturbance (I wrote about this in The Tension and Pretension of Blogging). This is by the way why I turned off the comments. I reflect about the eclectic mix that has no real life base and is not narrow enough to generate an uber abstract, pointless chatter. But the bottom line is that the people who imagine that they can reverse engineer a community from online into real life, they are delusional liers.

Jaron Lanier on ‘Persistent Somnolence’

by Ben Atlas on 01.17.2010.1:14am · 0 comments

NYT on Jaron’s new book – A Rebel in Cyberspace, Fighting Collectivism:

“Decisions made in the formative years of computer networking, for instance, promoted online anonymity, and over the years, as millions upon millions of people began using the Web, Mr. Lanier says, anonymity has helped enable the dark side of human nature. Nasty, anonymous attacks on individuals and institutions have flourished, and what Mr. Lanier calls a “culture of sadism” has gone mainstream.”

The point about books deserves a special attention:

“An impenetrable tone deafness rules Silicon Valley when it comes to the idea of authorship, he writes, recalling the Wired editor Kevin Kelly’s 2006 prediction that the mass scanning of books would one day create a universal library in which no book would be an island — in effect, one humongous text, made searchable and remixable on the Web… Google and other companies are scanning library books into the cloud in a massive Manhattan Project of cultural digitization. What happens next is what’s important. If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book. This is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don’t know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video.”

This why the anonymous culture is such a natural fit for religious Jews. After all the systematic subversion and obfuscation of authorship is the fundamental principal of the Judaic literary legacy. Even when there is a b’shem omro authorship footnote available, it’s still a part of the mashup called Torah. Jews are known as “people of the book”. So the digital horror described by Jaron Lanier is a part and the hyperlinked parcel of the entire Jewish doctrinal tradition and it gravitates towards its natural ecosystem online.

Virtual Conversation is an Oxymoron

by Ben Atlas on 01.17.2010.12:38am · 0 comments

James Hague – No Comment:

“Here’s a lesson I learned very early on after I started working full-time as a programmer (and that’s a peculiar sentence for me to read, as I no longer program for a living). I’d be looking at some code at my desk, and it made no sense. Why would anyone write it like this? There’s an obvious and cleaner way to approach the same problem. So I’d go down the hall to the person who wrote it in the first place and start asking questions…and find out that I didn’t have the whole picture, the problem was messier than it first appeared, and there were perfectly valid reasons for the code being that way. This happened again and again. Sometimes I did find a real flaw, but even then it may have only occurred with data that wasn’t actually possible (because, for example, it was filtered by another part of the system). Talking face to face changed everything, because they could draw diagrams, pull out specs, and give concrete examples.”

“Social Media” is a crock. Comments and online interactions only make sense as an introduction (or a follow up) to a real conversation. Talmud or Plato were notes of the real conversations. Online comments, especially comments without authorship is a bitter molasses. On my old blog I had regular readers and regular commentators. I patiently waited for some of them to take the conversation off line. When I realized that they wanted to remain distant and anonymous the conversations became empty. Human culture will always be defined by live forums and I mean “live” and then there is the opposite of “live”.

Jaron Lanier Rages Against Human Gadgets

by Ben Atlas on 01.4.2010.1:32pm · 0 comments

The Slate has an article about Jaron Lanier’s new book You Are Not a Gadget. This might be a good ocassion for the topical Jaron Lanier reading in the Edge - Beware of the Online Collective:

“In the last few years, though, a new twist has appeared. Along with all the sites that encourage individual expression, we are seeing a flood of schemes that celebrate collective action by huge numbers of bland, anonymous people. A lot of folks love this stuff. My worry is that we’re playing with fire.

There are a lot of recent examples of collectivity online. There’s the Wikipedia, which has absorbed a lot of the energy that used to go into individual, expressive websites, into one bland, master description of reality. Another example is the automatic mass-content collecting schemes like DIGG. Yet another, which deserves special attention, is the unfortunate design feature in most blog software that practically encourages spontaneous pseudonym creation. That has led to the global flood of anonymous mob-like commentary.

I remember the first time I noticed myself becoming mean when I left an anonymous comment on a blog. What is it about that situation that seems to bring out the worst in people so often? It’s a shame, because the benefits of blogs (such as that citizen journalists can pool resources to do research that otherwise might not get done) get cancelled out. Blogs often lead to such divisiveness that people end up caring more about clan membership than truth after a while.

There’s a pattern in recent online businesses that is sometimes called Web 2.0 that I think is distinct from the collectivity problem, but for some reason seems to be leading a lot of entrepreneurs into promoting collectives.

The Web 2.0 notion is that an entrepreneur comes up with some scheme that attracts huge numbers of people to participate in an activity online — like the video sharing on YouTube, for instance. Then you can “monetize” at an astronomical level by offering a way to bring ads or online purchasing to people in your gigantic crowd of participants. What is amazing about this idea is that the people are the value — and they also pay for the value they provide instead of being paid for it. For instance, when you buy something that is advertized, part of the price goes to the ads — but in the new online world, you yourself were the bait for the ad you saw. The whole cycle is remarkably efficient and concentrates giant fortunes faster than any other business scheme in history.”

Rarefied Reflection No. 1

by Ben Atlas on 12.28.2009.8:35am · 0 comments

I am starting the readers mail format. Issac from NY emails about The Case for the Negative Freedom in Isaiah Berlin v. the Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre:

1) So I watched all 3 hours of ‘the trap’ last night, and I have 2 notes. I think that Adam Curtis is making a mistake when he equates the individual in the Hayekian spontaneously generated order, with the simplified benefit maximizing individual presumed in John Nash’s game theory as applied to life. While the individuals in both of these systems are presumed to serve only their own self-interest, my impression is that the Hayekian view would allow for a lot more complexity in terms of the motivations of the participants, and complexity in terms of outcome. (I’m thinking of Nassim Taleb’s distinction between the hubristic outlook of deterministic mathematical models when applied to the real world which I see as related to the work of Nash in game theory, and the more complex fractal math of Benoit Mandelbrot which I see as being related to the ideas of Hayek.) While contemporary work in behavioral economics might disturb the hold that some give to game theory on its power to predict human behavior, I don’t think that this work would at all discount the ideas of Hayek.

This kind of oversimplification and muddling of ideas and of the connections between ideas and events, really made it hard for me to take Curtis seriously. I take it that, that is what you were referring to when you mentioned the broad brush.

Issac, you know several people emailed me about The Trap and The Century of Self that they watched the entire 3-4 hour series in one sitting. Naturally this is because Adam Curtis lifts the veil on many new and pivotal ideas that we not only take for granted but believe to be eternal. Indeed there is a huge flaw in oversimplification of the complex concepts. But you can imagine that delving into the complexity will turn the documentary in an unwatchable page of Talmud. Instead this documentary is the best conversation starter. It’s like Bible that despite being cryptic addresses the visceral dilemmas of our existence. I don’t know much about Hayek, but Nash reappears at the end on the 3rd film, cured from his schizophrenia, to imply that there is more complexity to the game. And this brings me to the second point you make, are people expecting the worse from their fellow citizens, even to larger degree than ever in history?

2) (and this might be related to your post earlier today) I think that among frum people, the simplified model of the individual presumed in game theory, that is suspicious and ruthless and traitorous, is much more prevalent than in the larger society, where people are generally more trusting and cooperative.

Indeed, paradoxically the frum culture is the most selfish and unfriendly society, but specifically about the anonymous comments. A religious person is always wearing a mask in public. The true feeling, thoughts, the rebellious and transgressive urges are separated from the public persona. But the internet medium compels transparency and honesty, it induces the real-time expression of the real. For a religious person to speak honestly without a mask is like going naked through a public square, an unnatural act.

So comments on frum blogs are graffiti walls in a school bathroom. Scribbled opinions with no expectation of conversation (the frum blogs are actually worse than a public toilet. In a toilet you can occasionally encounter a draiwing or an original poem but people who leave graffiti on the frum blogs have been indoctrinated into a system that values quotations, someone’s opinion above even the anonymous personal expression). One step up is when people create a name and a character. You can have a dialogue with a character but this is also problematic. As we discussed everything we do, including the conversation is a game . And you have to put some chips on the table to play a game properly. Speaking as some character means that you are playing the game with no chips on the table and it changes what you say to the core. You need a special permission for that but it poisons the well nevertheless.

Frum Parody Fumigates Anonymity

by Ben Atlas on 12.27.2009.9:22pm · 0 comments

As the noxious anonymity has completely taken over the dark matter of the frumie blogs, the toxic agents type away their own parodies:

Joseph: “Just a quick note. I’ve posted on this blog under the screen name “Joseph” for a couple years. The above post (of this thread and an earlier thread today) is that of another “Joseph”, who has posted on this blog under that name for the first time today (to the best of my recollection. And I do read this blog regularly.) I don’t mind all that much that someone else is using the same screen name, as it is relatively common, but I do want to point out to the readership that it is someone else.”

“relatively common” morons. The followup post.

Top Ten Reasons I Closed Comments on this Blog

by Ben Atlas on 12.8.2009.10:42am · 0 comments

  1. Virtually all online communities are forum outlets superimposed on real groups or tribes, providing a conversational release to an existing culture. I don’t aspire to mirror any group-think.
  2. Emotional reactions, the “likes”, LOLs, “that was greats”, etc., bore me (see What is there to like on the Internet?).
  3. I have spoken on numerous occasions against anonymity on the Internet and especially against the changing handles. Anonymity is a conversational disease. I am not interested in talking to ghosts (see The Plague of the Internet Anonymity).
  4. Facebook and Twitter and the Social Media in general are drastically changing the dynamics of comments. People are less inclined to post a coherent paragraph, instead they comment in a few syllables or at most a sentence. Often people link to a post but continue the conversation on a platform where the link originated.
  5. I remain approachable via email, the platforms and even in real life.
  6. Akismet catches all of the spam, but the ongoing ritual of cleaning up the garbage is annoying.
  7. The posts I write are too advanced for most, I rarely get a comment or a feedback that is worth the engagement.
  8. I write to sort my own ideas and have zero expectation to the reward or understanding. I actually don’t need it. And I don’t care that much about the stats. Perhaps this is the reason why the readership is growing.
  9. Comments slow down the site and clutter the database. All commenting plugins that I tried, and I tried them all, are flawed.
  10. I might change my mind on this in the future.

Struggling with Technology

by Ben Atlas on 09.13.2009.4:29pm · 0 comments

I have struggled with technology for the last couple of weeks. When I started this blog I made a rule that I will introduce features on the condition that I can figure it out myself. But the worst part is that many technical components are beyond your control, i.e. web hosts or applications, etc. There is a fundamental flaw in application developed today. Geeks want to introduce leading edge features, its more fun for them. But most people are in a technical overload and they crave simple apps. Applications that do routine tasks better, not make them more complicated by introducing new features. I will try to simplify this blog and features relentlessly.The good news about an open platform is that is always a choice. The bad thing about an open platform is that you have to go through inevitable and highly frustrating technical setbacks in search for the balance. Many times you think that perhaps one can just take a prepackaged platform and stop messing with options. This is such a common life’s dilemma and it plays out in everything we do. As far as blogs go perhaps the time spent on tinkering with options is not worth it, it takes away from the central purpose of playing with ideas not apps.

Comments – a Throwaway Expression of Approval and Opposition

by Ben Atlas on 08.27.2009.6:27am · 0 comments

Nicolas Holzapfel wrote a guest post on TechCruch about comments, a subject I have obsessed about since the Internet. Ostensibly the post talks about the introduction of Echo functionally by J-KIT commenting platform but it really touches on the fundamental dilemmas of the internet old online conversation culture. Nicholas slices through – Echo won’t kill comments — they’re already dead:

“Lots of comments amounts to an enormous long list of entirely unstructured text. There are no dividers or subheadings, no logical progression of arguments or groupings of opinion and no distinction between unique, intelligent insights and throwaway expressions of approval and opposition. Because nobody can be bothered to read through such a mess before they add their own comment, there isn’t even the structure of a coherent conversation. Instead, there is endless, pointless repetition; conversations emerge, peter out and then re-emerge 50 comments later with new participants who haven’t noticed that the same issues were discussed 50 comments ago….

…I’m disappointed with how comments are handled. To my mind, the Internet should be the world’s parliament. It should be a massive conversation, a democratizing collective debate which abolishes the distinction between authors and readers – the active opinion-producer and the passive opinion-consumer. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen if all that the readers author is a garbled, unstructured mess that nobody reads.

Some people believe that comments on popular articles will always be like this because many-to-many conversations are impossible. They believe that if we want coherence we must content ourselves with either conversations in small groups (few-to-few) or one-way conversations whereby a throng of admirers hang on the words of an admired expert (one-to-many).”

I will add couple of points:

  1. One should add to the conversation Disqus commenting system arguably more influential platform compared to J-KIT that just introduced “echo: functionality this week, many say in a competitive response to J-KIT. The race between commenting platforms is about the geekiest of functions not about the “parliamentary culture”. Human conversation craves simplicity of a dialog, not the hotness of the next gadget.
  2. And speaking of “a throwaway expressions of approval and opposition” one should mention Twitter as one of the culprits and it’s detrimental influence on traditional comments.
  3. The idiotic likes and dislikes. They all point to the style that departs from a coherent conversation towards the supremacy of emotional reactions. The importance of how I feel as opposed of what I think. For an author the thinking part is so much more valuable yet the morons still persist with “LOL, Amazing!!!!!”
  4. Anonymity is at the root of the eroding conversation. You can’t have a dialog with handle, especially a deceptive handle. This is huge problem; people need to be taught away from the retched anonymous culture.
  5. As long as the meta-blogs don’t lead in this, little will change and the comments will continue to erode. Alas the big blogs don’t care about conversation. They hideous “likes”, the “echo” and the rest of the visual garbage are the vanity mentions that translate into clicks.

How I Write my Posts

by Ben Atlas on 08.24.2009.7:08am · 1 comment

I sleep on it. I usually think about my existential posts for days, sometimes months. Often when I think about an idea intensively during a day, I continue to process it in my sleep and in the morning it formulates, after I had a chance to thoroughly dream about it. There is one post that I have been carrying inside for several months now. Even tested parts of it in conversations with friends. When I publish it you might have no idea that it was anything special but for me it so important nevertheless. You might not even read if it doesn’t have pictures, I don’t care.

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