things I like part 4

[buster]

1. This American Life podcast
2. Mulligatawny soup, my debut in Indian cooking, and Madhur Jaffrey's "An Invitation to Indian Cooking"
3. Mini-decanters on local wines
4. The hundred pushup challenge (hundredpushups.com)
5. Shopping in Pike Place Market on a cold sunny winter day

Comments

[buster]

I just think that we're not so good at experiencing an event outside of the context of a photograph or a blog post or a twitter. At least, those of us who have begun to use those external brain devices fairly regularly and automatically.

"C" seems like a moot point, as cultural relevance has always been difficult to determine. "B", same, since having something on a server is probably more stabilized for the long term than something in a journal or a letter to a friend. "A", however, is probably the crux of the problem. Becoming an "expert" in a significant person or life is now a million times harder, because there is now so much more to become an expert in.

[billetdoux]

There's a shit ton of work being done in this area - people like the Long Now foundation tackling this very thing. I've also been advocating OS-Level version migration and archiving for quite some time. Apple's Time Machine is a great start on that front.

Also, as we move to the cloud, the concept of a single "server" is becoming moot. The internet as a whole will have to die for us to lose anything.

The volume of content, of course, is a bigger problem, but I think new solutions will present themselves. Things like Google, of course, and their extranet-based search appliances, but also the social web filtering and data mining technologies that are being developed at the behest of marketers who want to know what's going on on the web.

I have a close friend who just got her PHD in digital archiving and we talk about this stuff all the time, and academia's nowhere near where it will ultimately need to be. But the tools are being developed nonetheless, by tech companies and search engines.

I don't record things

[laurelfan]

Or, to be more precise, I don't record the things I think are most significant, which I believe are the things that I am most aware of while they're happening. Weird sort of selection bias, which probably supports your point about the experiencing firsthand.

Or in other words there are three categories of events -- those that I know are meaningful, those that I know are meaningless, and those that I'm not sure about. And I only record the last category. So I must appear to be desperately searching for meaning in life, which is only true some of the time...

Re: I don't record things

[buster]

Why don't you record things which you think are significant?

Re: I don't record things

[laurelfan]

One reason is because I don't think I need to, I think I'll remember what I need to remember.

Another reason is that I'm usually too busy doing whatever it is to record it at the time (which I usually do with photos, which requires two hands free and taking care of a fragile piece of equipment).

Maybe another reason is that it is hard for me to describe things in general so I don't try to describe things I have a clear idea of. Kind of like when someone who can't draw doodles they just scribble random patterns instead of drawing something that they see.

[ellenlouise]

I also tend not to record things. I am particularly horrified by tourists taking video of their vacations. They've become a documenter, and are no longer a participant. I feel the same way about photographs to a certain extent -- while they are good and I do take them, inserting a piece of electronic equipment between yourself and what you are ostensibly experiencing cuts you out of the scene a bit, I think.

In a literary theory class I remember discussing theories of language and experience, and the great modern experiment of a man who meticulously wrote down the details of every day of his life for many years, in the later 18th century. He imagined himself leaving behind a most important document exposing "real" life. After he died those who read it concluded it was rubbish. Everyone needs a filter, an interpretation. This is why novels, although they aren't the most popular art form, will never wholly lose their audience, why novels, although fiction, can in a way capture "real" life more than most journals ever could.

thought question

[laurelfan]

Is it the device or the awareness of the recording that cuts you out of the scene? Is it being a documenter or an actor? Or filter?

[ingopixel]

i know what you mean. last night at the bus stop with no t-mobile i was all panicked. i was in a room present with awesome people who i love, but the fact that i couldn't twitter about the tiniest little thoughts or read anyone else's made me feel cut off.

[goawayplease]

I don't keep a regular record of my life, but I feel like writing things down is a way of reflecting on them and shuffling them into a useful order for myself. I don't do this as often now, but when things were confusing for me as a kid or I'd had a really crappy day, I'd sit there with my journal and write out the bad things that had happened as a way to make sense of them. Sometimes I didn't even really finish off the account, but the act of starting to write it all down would help. Often when I go back and re-read things, I find that I don't really remember the things I was writing about. I mean, I didn't remember that my ex-boyfriend crushed my 25th birthday party by refusing to go, but I have a whole couple of pages detailing it. Maybe if I hadn't written it down, I would have let it churn in the back of my mind and I would have left his loser ass sooner, but if I hadn't written it down, I also wouldn't have found it later on when I was still moping about breaking up our relationship and felt better about my decision to dump his