“Is this all the web is for, trying to bring the world to us and measure our success in hits and links? Or is the gift of the web its potential to bring our true selves to the world? Not our mundane musings and shout outs to people who recognize us on their home page because we use the same stupid software, but the depths of what is within us. What if everyone spoke their minds and actually put some effort into it? How about presenting who you are – what you are made of – what drives your inner being? Take a chance and create without bounds. Don’t waste the power the web has given us in a hit-seeking circle jerk.”

“Should we be surprised at the idea that telling the untold stories of the mundane can be perceived as an act of such potential violence that the mere reference to mundane activities needs be banned from the public domain? Not, I submit, if we keep in mind the interrelation between the mundane, storytelling, the untellable, untold story and the construction of the human. In my discussion of Bohannon and the Tiv, I mentioned the manner in which spelling out the story of the mundane makes us strangers to ourselves. If storytelling produces and perpetuates our construction of the human, and the limits of stories are humanity’s limits, the mundane rests on precisely that crux: its presence is necessary for being human, but its story cannot be told — for investigating the parameters of the mundane will radically distort our assumption of our own humanity.”

“And if looking at the mundane can reveal how the limit of our humanity lies deep inside us, rather than somewhere in our outer reaches, we may well be in a position to recognize our identity with and responsibility towards the infinite diversity of beings who share our planet.”

“Like everyone else in an organization, IT professionals are aiming to pick up their pace and their reach. But while many companies are addressing the escalating demand for information by creating larger “storage bins” and making sure they can pull more information through their expansive networks, others have begun to realize that it’s just not going to be that easy.”

“Andersen Consulting’s Institute for Strategic Change asked IT executives if they had a process for developing actionable information, and they answered with a resounding no. Eighty-six percent
reported that they have no process or that they plan to use the traditional IT requirements definition and data-modeling processes. These are the same processes that have been instrumental in creating today’s nonactionable information environment. In either case, they aren’t talking about an information design process.”

“All of the sites owned by Automatic Media will share a common advertising sales force, technology and administrative resources, a move that should cut costs and increase the efficiency of individual sites. The Webzines will maintain their distinctive brand names and editorial voices, though they plan to weave hyperlinks to each other throughout their respective sites.”

“Automatic Media doesn’t expect most of its growth to come from
hiring teams of high-paid journalists and writers to expand editorial operations. Instead, the
company plans to place a growing emphasis on user participation in discussions about the stories
and columns on Feed, Suck and other editorial sites. That approach, aimed at attracting
advertisers as the user base grows, has the double advantage of being highly interactive and
relatively cheap.”

“The Web is not a mirror of the print industry, that’s why advertising is not so important. The unique thing about the Web is that it’s interactive. We all know that. The challenge is to squeeze quality, high-integrity writing out of the readers, and present it back to them with your seal of quality. That’s a much employing writers and running ads as the print industry does.

I was disappointed to see that Automatic Media is using SlashDot-style conferencing for the Suck-Feed
combination. I strongly believe this is the wrong approach. Better to start new Sucks and Feeds using the traditions of sarcasm and literacy that each of these pubs have done such a great job of starting.”

“Alison MacLean’s film may appear to be another in a rather truncated and peculiar line of movies that perhaps began with Drugstore Cowboy: the needle nostalgia film. These are movies about people shooting heroin and questing for meaning in the seventies, made, one surmises, for people who
may or may not have quested for meaning and shot heroin in the late eighties and early nineties while
wearing seventies clothes. I hope this doesn’t sound too glib and dismissive, however, because Maclean’s
movie, like the much-revered short-story collection by Denis Johnson on which it is based, happens to be a real work of art, which these days is about as rare as finding someone who still shoots heroin, as opposed to snorts it.”