360 VIEW

Understanding David Weinberg, understanding me

1 June, 2008

Through a very in-depth look at David Weinberg; his books, blogs, movies, radio segments and the philosophies within them. I have learned a lot about one of the most interesting on going insights into the future of the internet and subsequently our future-based world. His significant discoveries, interests and style of presentation is reminiscent of my blogs throughout the year.

Unwittingly, i wrote my blogs with full knowledge that coherency was not key to the requirements of this unit. This allowed me to passionately look at the prescribed readings and actually enjoy responding to them. Because for once i was not just “selling my soul”, so to speak, for an end of term mark (hopefully HD). I was trying to understand the significance of studying a subject which is not historical exhausted and over-talked about. I was and am studying the internet which is still wrapped in mystery. Few things that are known are quite liberating like how it internet allows for new trends, experimentation and insights into information without borders and scholarly limitations. I have witnessed a range of interesting people who have tried to define the internet by their understanding of it. From Walter J. Ong, George Landow, Mark Bernstien, Darren Tofts, Greg Ulmer, Wark Mckenzie and finally David Weinberg. All of which have taught me there is sooo much more involved to the internet than just mere lifeless pop-sites like Facebook, Myspace and Msn Messenger. Within which people become enslaved to “pimping their image” © Boo Chapple. some have taught how the internet has taken society away from its autocratic television and authoritative book world and replaced it with a democratic system where no comment is finalised without clarification or debate. This culture of democratic literature is encapsulated in the world of the blog where free speech and endless possibilities are in abundance. some have presented the internet as a purer form of truth where ideas are constantly re-understood thus posing as a richer tool to philosophers who wish to uphold one of the most fundamental truths of philosophy that truth is ever-changing and with this so too should our philosophies. If Michel Foucault was alive today i imagine him to be really taken in to the amazing world of the internet. He, more than most philosophers, was discredited as changing his stance on certain previous conclusions in his later works. And to this he replied…

When people say, “Well, you thought this a few years ago and now you say something else,” my answer is… [laughs] “Well, do you think I have worked hard all those years (claiming to be a philosopher) to say the same thing and not to be changed?”‘

This encapsulates the very nature of truth as ever-changing. Further to this he is presenting being trully intelligent and not just being true to intellectual standards.

I hope to hold on to this most basic philosophy of nothing being conclusive for the years to come.

Another development in my intellectual maturation has been the way i present information through the final assignment, using the process of Mystory. I have learned how to present information with an intuitive flare, that leaves no room for a measured calculative approach. Put succinctly…

“{…} a speculative mode that requires that the mystoriographer approach her material in a way that promotes conjecture, as a mystery, rather than calculation. Calculation involves a set of rules or the imposition of an empirical grid that delimits the possibility of chance encounters by relegating intuition to the margins of inquiry. Intuition, on the other hand, is more personal and visceral, relying as it does on feelings{…}” © Lisa Gye.

Through finishing up this course on David Weinberg i have seen the way this philosophy on, well, life can be actually applied. He has successfully achieved what we, students, are trying to do in this course. Creating a new world, a new standard of hermeneutically understanding and presenting information. Weinberg has succesfully set out clear guidelines through examples displayed on all forms of media, from Print to internet to orality.

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