The internet
More and more I like the word “interwebs” – it has more evocative appeal: Webs upon webs intricately connected with each other, an immense neural network. “Net”, to me, sounds like it is just one big net – maybe it was like that in 1985 but it’s certainly more complex today.

Ikiaqqivik #1: Layers
Ikiaqqivik is the Inuit word for the internet. Literally, it means “travelling through layers”. It comes from the concept describing what a shaman does when asked to find out about living or deceased relatives or where animals have disappeared to: travel across time and space to find answers.

What a great word for the internet. While “interwebs” evokes the strands in each web, ikiaqqivik points to the multidimensionality of the internet. Both the words “net” and “web” conjure up two dimensions.

One example of the layers would be the different purposes we want for the internet; in this post, Carol talks about the uses that marketing and politics want for the internet: a transmission machine for simple, clear-cut messages. Others want it to be a tool for social change, for making friends, or for publishing. (For more on the purpose of the internet, see here, here, here and here).

Ikiaqqivik #2: Travelling / Wandering
The internet (interwebsiaqqivik?) is not about being static. It’s all about travelling back and forth and crisscrossing the many strands and layers of interconnected information. I wonder, though, whether “wandering” is a better word. A great deal, if not the vast majority, of the connections we make on interwebsiaqqivik happen not because we set out to make that connection but because our curiosity leads us down a path that just minutes ago we had no idea existed. “Wandering” seems to capture this better than “travelling”, which has a bit more of a purpose-driven connotation.

Zen: Where Is The Self in the Web?
Carol says,

Seems like the theory of who and what we are, wish to be and will be, is being constantly tested and transformed by the myriad circumstances of the world around and within us. There can be no one person in the midst of this change, and the search for that one person or one identity has been the work of mystics and thinkers down through the ages. So I leave the question of internal or external identity, of internal and external spaces, domestic and public, private and public to the French philosophers (and others).

Let me just pose as a Buddhist French philosopher here for a minute and expand on Carol’s words and ask, who is that person-self that is wandering through interwebsiaqqivik? To what degree do we freely determine our identity in cyberspace? Are we one person or many? When we are more than one, do we consciously shapeshift like a shaman or scatter our identities depending on the spaces we occupy (e.g. Facebook vs. online learning vs. blogging)? Or maybe “scatter” is the wrong word and “adapt” would be better? And once again, how do our online identities relate to our offline personae?

For today, I’m going to leave you with these questions.

A friend of mine said recently, “Growing up means being able to live with the loose ends.”

Mind you, that’s just my way of doing it. For some people, keeping the different aspects of their lives separate is important, works well, and is even enjoyable. There are all kinds of people who, for example, get a lot out of anonymous blogging; and I’m not talking about blog scrapers, trolls and porn bloggers here – just people who have chosen to stay anonymous, like Waiter Rant, Patient Anonymous or Going Private.

(Sidebar: Even whether one decides be highly transparent and integrated or private and compartmentalized, is a decision that’s influenced – maybe even determined – by one’s personal background, experience and personality type. Which explains why one does not have to be an extrovert to be transparent, or an introvert to be more private; such decisions come informed by many of the mind’s strands).

Carol, in her last post, was talking about integrating one’s online persona. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way that really works for me. In terms of pulling all the information together, of the ones I use, MyBlogLog and Facebook are probably the most comprehensive. But I really, really don’t like their layout; if I use such a social media tool it needs to look and feel comfortable; it needs to be a bit of a living room. Both Facebook and MyBlogLog have a bit of a mall feeling and I guess I’m of a generation and persuasion that doesn’t find malls particularly inviting.

I know there are many more such tools out there but I feel very unmotivated to try them out because so far, all of them have me disappointed (with a possible, very lukewarm exception of FriendFeed). Ideally, I’d like to see something that is

• comprehensive in terms of pulling together all my online presences (and actually does it; Tumblr, for example, promises to pull in my Twitter feed but doesn’t)
• easy to use
• responsive
• relatively hacker-safe
• fast (how much of a time delay would i put up with? 5 minutes maybe?)

and has

• clean layout that I can easily change
• tagging ability
• the ability to post extra material, ideally all the way from text to video (a la Tumblr, which, by the way, I kind of like – but see above)
• an FAQ that talks about more than just the very obvious
• easy, friendly and time-sensitive help (please NONE of that farmed-out help, for example like the one on Twitter; I really like the model that Dreamhost uses for support)
• ideally, the sort of follower-sorting that TweetDeck has
• public/private settings
• favouriting
• whatever back-end structure that’s needed to keep the thing working a good 90%+ of the time

Is there something like that out there? And would I/you want to pay for it? How much? Would it be okay to have advertising on it?

Or, here’s an idea. I was just wondering what the “meatspace” equivalence of such an online space would be. A sort of plaza, perhaps, or a park. It’s infrastructure.

What if governments started building such sorts of infrastructure?

Or should it be more like Wikipedia?

Enough questions for now?

Image by mike (el madrileño)

Aside from our personal blogs, we’re also taking care of our clients, and are involved in other projects of our own as well, leaving our flagship blog waiting at the harbour to be loaded with content cargo and information passengers! Yet it’s more than just being too busy. When we said that Alphablogs isn’t giving us what we need – we meant it isn’t giving us back what we need to make us want to keep up with the postings, so we applied some of our own advice to ourselves. Make it fun, and make it real.

My experience in producing weekly radio programs is useful here. (Even if it was long long ago when the earth was cooling.) I’m not talking about the technical radio part – I want to talk about the experience of producing. I can contrast two experiences, both with CKUA. One was a program that involved edited interviews with artists, broadcast on a weekly basis. The interviews with artists, the putting together the weekly program, the sending it out for broadcast: all that was great. But I felt more lonely being in the “communications” industry than I ever had in any other type of work. I think it may have been related to pouring my work out onto the impersonal sound waves, expanding into space until eventually disintegrating into the emptiness of the void. (A mite dramatic, but you get my drift.) Even my friends didn’t listen to the shows. And I was never in contact with anyone who did. The other program was also weekly, but was just plain fun. Why? because I enjoyed working so much with another broadcaster. We spelled off each other, and just winged it with readings and music, laughing and letting it be as natural as possible. So I didn’t have that sense that little or nothing was coming back, because it was created in joy and fun. If people listened, that was great, but the act of creating it was already a good “give-back”. That’s what we’re going for here now at the Alphablogs blog.

As Isabella mentioned, we aren’t marketers, per se, yet we do know how to market, and are experienced in that realm. We just want everything in balance, in integrity and in harmony with the direction of the world today. Sustainability, honest human relationships, truth, beauty, you know… all that.

I had a great talk with a publisher friend the other day who said that we are really only making projects, it’s not actually running a business like widget sales (oh hey there are such things as widgets – but they’re virtual), but rather a series of fascinating and interesting projects. That model works very well for me.

Loving everything that Isabella mentioned about connection, creating and nurturing community, democracy of open source: all that and more is a beautiful way to see how we are flowing in this environment, what we value about it and what we need to keep in mind whenever we are engaged in any of our projects.

I tend to wax on theoretically, but here are the old brass tacks:  I’m with you, Isabella, on the weekly conversation posts, the Oct. 18th check in, and the SEO tasks too.

Within that aspect of our goals, I remain flowing in this electrified environment. And in keeping with something else we discussed, about integrating many of our online activities, rather than holding them separated,  I’ve just added the alphablogs feed to my tumblog: My Electric Persona which includes my Twitter feeds and my Carol Sill personal blog.

What do you think? Is it better to have separate identities online, or to integrate them? I think there is a purpose to a certain amount of privacy, but what are your thoughts here?