Ich weiß, ich weiß, ich weiß: wir werden alle überschwemmt. Von zu Texten verbundenen Worten, die wenig sagen wollen und wenig sagen. Und trotzdem: es gibt sie, die kleinen Großen - Gedanken, die auf den ersten Blick beinahe übersehen werden. Einer meiner Lieblingsautoren Nicholson Baker hat in seinem Buch U und I. Wie groß sind die Gedanken? die Frage wunderbar beantwortet und damit selbst den Beweis geliefert.

Und gestern Abend lauschten wir im Unterpenzinger Literatursalon Christa Schwertzig und der Geschichte vom kleinen König Dezember, der beim Blick in den nächtlichen Winterhimmel sich geradezu aufbläht wie ein Gas und riesig fühlt und nicht verschwindend klein wie wir Menschen als hätten wir uns gerade bei etwas ertappt. Das war gestern Abend.

Heute früh kam das nächste Zeichen - in Gestalt von "CONTEXT is CONTENT" - einem Newsletter von Richard Thieme, der eine Zeitlang stumm war und jetzt wieder spricht - jedes Mal sehr zu mir. Wenn Ihnen sein phantastisches Buch Islands in the Clickstream: Reflections on Life in a Virtual World zu lang und zu englisch ist, lesen sie zumindest diesen Auszug eines Briefs, der heute früh in meiner Inbox lag. Und wenn Ihnen auch das zu lang sein sollte, weil sie dringend ein redundantes SMS schreiben oder einer Twitter-Spur folgen müssen, die sie genau nirgends hinführen wird, dann lesen sie zumindest diesen einen Satz daraus:

"Touch base with the real, please. And even when it’s cold out there, climb a big hill and look around. Look around and keep yourself in perspective. The universe is bigger, life is much shorter, and it’s later than we think."

Schöne Feiertage. Gehe ins Offline. Jetzt!


Identity is a set of points of reference, after all, by which we anchor a self-image or an image of our tribe. Tribes have been nation states lately, but that’s not true anymore. Or it’s true like all transitional states are true, both yes and no. We continue to operate as nations but the global structures have pulled us into something else. Because we don’t have good names for what that is, calling it say “the new world order,” it’s hard to talk about realities emerging from new combinations of people and events, events that seem to have lives of their own but never just happen to happen, no, they are planned and executed, most of the big ones seem to be. Changes like a global financial system, the concentration of media in a few hands, the management of perception so the sixties and seventies are less likely to happen again or happen in that way, a way that deeply interfered ...

and while all that is happening, seldom discussed for what it is on shout shows or in twittering text, terse text as wee tiny messages must be these days, neuroscience and other biological breakthroughs are making it possible to take our essential attributes and magnify them or accelerate certain processes, making us incrementally smarter, stronger, quicker, more resistant to attacks, and the fusion of our brains with electromagnetic implants and processes, these are all changes of a huge degree that will alter the points of reference on the fly of who we think we are, who in fact we are, and one day we’ll wake up and reminisce about generations that were merely born, not made, whose qualities were throws of the dice instead of bought and paid for, and whose lives seem so short compared to the century plussers who will come to inhabit the world in larger and larger numbers.

....

Where life can happen, it will happen. And where it does, when it does, it begins to evolve. And we hairless primates are just out of the darkness, just up from a swamp, we humans-come-lately who learned but a few decades ago that the Milky Way as we quaintly call it was not a skein of nearby stars or about black holes, dark energy, and other such silliness.

Others have been around for a good long while. So they know a few things that we don’t. We are the top of the food chain in our dreams, in our dreams.

But this is what I want to say: one of the immense events of the 21st century will be the blossoming in the fullness of human consciousness of the deeply felt realization that we share this universe with myriads of species, some of them way more intelligent than us, smarter stronger or quicker long ago, whose doings look indeed like magic to our child eyes.

The realization – not the hunch, the hope, the fear, or the sci-fi dream, but the realization – based on knowing, knowing incontrovertibly, that here and there are relative, so we can indeed get there from here and here from there, that we are a wee small species and just getting up and going like toddlers walking around the block for the first time, that how we have thought of ourselves is not how we have been, how we thought we were made or created was a nice lovely story or myth but not exactly how it was, and the change in our context will make drops in consumer spending, interest rates, and employment seem like small concerns, we will even become fondly nostalgic for the good old days when we worried about ourselves and such trivial things, thinking we knew who we were because that was the point of reference we had been taught by school-masters every bit as ignorant as ourselves.

The challenge is to expand and not blow our minds, to know what we already know.

I once wrote, “The readiness is everything, and during those moments of exquisite timing; tolled by a clock that ticks to a different rhythm; we know that when everything can go right, it will, at the best possible moment. ... The universe is gregarious and welcoming. We are built to live in space that is gateless, unbounded, free.”*

Fear not, little flock, someone else once wrote. The universe is welcoming. Or words to that effect. Despite the sometime evidence, despite the anxieties of the times, despite the alarms and sirens, keep your heads and wits about you.
Touch base with the real, please. And even when it’s cold out there, climb a big hill and look around. Look around and keep yourself in perspective.

The universe is bigger, life is much shorter, and it’s later than we think.

Im jüngsten Brandeins die Geschichte über Vanessa Avalos gelesen. Ihre Berufsbezeichnung: Öffentliche Schreiberin in Mexiko City - genauer am Plaza Santo Domingo, wo sie mit ihrer elektrischen Schreibmaschine an einem Holztisch sitzt. Sie verfasst private Briefe und Schreiben, gestaltet Einladungen oder Visitenkarten und tippt für Schüler Hausaufgaben ab. Mit ihrer Tochter lebt sie in einer Drei-Zimmer-Wohnung.

"Die 'Escribanos' oder 'Evangelistas', wie sie im Volksmund heißen, haben in Mexiko Tradition. Ich habe schon als Kind zwischen den Schreibern und Druckmaschinen auf diesem Platz gespielt. Damals gab es noch viel mehr von uns. Vor allem Analphabeten ließen hier ihren Schriftverkehr erledigen. Manchmal ließen sie auch Liebesbriefe verfassen. Heute können die meisten Leute zwar schreiben, aber unsere Dienste sind immer noch gefragt."

Monatsverdienst, Grundkosten und Altersvorsorge: In guten Monaten verdient Vanessa Avalos bis zu 250 Euro. Ihre Wohnung kostet 100 Euro, für Lebensmittel und Haushalt gibt sie etwa 70 Euro aus. Material, die Wartung der Schreibmaschine und die Gebühr für den begehrten Standplatz kosten monatlich 45 Euro. Zudem zahlt sie einen Teil des Schulgeldes für die Kinder und versorgt ihren Pudel. Ihre einzige Altersvorsorge sind die Kinder.

Und ihre größte Bedrohung ist die Technisierung: "Die zunehmende Verbreitung von Computern ist schlecht fürs Geschäft. Aber Visitenkarten werden mit einer Schreibmaschine viel schöner. Deshalb werden wir nie ganz verdrängt werden."

Solange es die Liebe gibt ...

Gerade über Derek Powazek gestolpert, der 1996 FRAY ins Leben gerufen hat. Powazek, Fray? Worüber redet der Junge? Sie haben recht: das alles ist recht chaotisch, habe die Fährte gerade erst aufgenommen und nur eine Ahnung, wohin sie führt. Der Plot: Eine Storytelling Web Site wird zum Magazin. Das ist doch hervorhebenswert genug: von online zu offline also, gegen den Strich.

Gestolpert bin ich auf Powazek über einen Blogeintrag von ihm, der meine ganze Aufmerksamkeit auf sich zog: Death to User-Generated Content.



Powazek im O-Ton: "Writers produce stories or articles. Authors write fiction or memoir. These are words infused with meaning and romance. Can you imagine a writer saying "I am a content provider" when asked what they do?" THIS GOES DIRECTLY AGAINST ME. BE CAREFUL DEREK!

"Lately the notion that the web is about "user-generated content" has been getting more traction. With the success of MySpace and Flickr, pundits are looking for a trend. And they've found one in this hateful phrase. But "user-generated content" is nothing new online. In fact, it's what the network was designed for.

So let's not give in to the buzzphrase du jour. Let's use the real words. Those people posting to Amazon pages? They're writing reviews. Those folks on Flickr? They're making photographs. And if we must have an umbrella term to describe the whole shebang, I have a suggestion. Try this on for size: Authentic Media.

Authentic media comes to you unfiltered by the global brands and conglomerates that have taken over the mainstream media. Authentic media is the raw, first-person narrative you can find on blogs and homepages. Authentic media is what happens when the mediators get out of the way and give the mic over to the people who actually have something to say.

The best part about this phrase? It paints the rest of the mediascape as inauthentic. I can live with that."

Me too. Thanks Derek!