3tv

Via John Macgregor Wise:

a) pick up a book which is the closest to you at the moment
b) open page 123
c) find the third sentence
d) post it in your Live Journal (plus the instructions)
e) don’t choose the book, just pick up the one closest to you

The one closest is my notebook and it only has 100 pages, turning around I find Adrian Mackenzie: Cutting Code - Software and Sociality, here goes:

“network configuration and management.”

A rather short line, the book is not that long too, but it is very good. N. Kathrine Hayles writes in the paratext on the backcover: “As soon as I finished this book, I turned it over and began reading it a second time; its deep clarity and compelling power demanded nothing less.”

The latest version of State of the blogosphere is out now by Technorati (who tracks 50 million blogs). I must admit that it is the first time I look at this and what really caught my eye is the language blogposts are written in:

One statistical thing that looks a bit weird is the difference between some of the languages since the last surveys. English goes from 34% (April) to 41% (May) and the ends at 39 % in June. But nonetheless I am surprised by the amount of non-english post, is this indicative of blogs and social software/web2.0 being the technology that finally restructures some of the hegemony we all thought the internet would do in the 90’ties? Of course one would have to do some research into what is actually written, how is it incorporated into everyday life, business and so on. But the numbers are impressive.
Speaking of hegemony I stumbled upon this today http://www.functionfeminism.com/. It is a guide to theory and artworks related to cyberfeminism – check out the timeline -awesome! I’m though missing the net.art generator by Cornelia Sollfrank, but since it has its primary authorizing context within net.art it is probably judged to geeky - sorry for the hegemony ;-)

The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently published a survey of American bloggers, as is obvious from the quotes below there is not much that is surprising. What did catch my attention is the amount of bloggers amoung internet users: 8% and 39% read blogs, which probably means that the amount of people reading blogs that do not blog themselves are 31%. This is a quit impressive number, but then again, it is difficult to measure the impact of the blogsphere on civilsociety, democracy, the intellect of the public blah blah, from these numbers since most people are writing about their own life and alike. But one question remains though, what does this mean to the small circle of friends reading their friends blogs and writing themselves from their everyday life. This is probably where the biggest impact is.

Quotes:

Some 54% of bloggers say that they have never published their writing or media creations anywhere else; 44% say they have published elsewhere.
Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs
……

The Pew Internet Project blogger survey finds that the American blogosphere is dominated by those who use their blogs as personal journals. Most bloggers do not think of what they do as journalism. Most bloggers say they cover a lot of different topics, but when asked to choose one main topic, 37% of bloggers cite “my life and experiences” as a primary topic of their blog. Politics and government ran a very distant second with 11% of bloggers citing those issues of public life as the main subject of their blog. Entertainment-related topics were the next most popular blog-type, with 7% of bloggers, followed by sports (6%), general news and current events (5%), business (5%), technology (4%), religion, spirituality or faith (2%), a specific hobby or a health problem or illness (each comprising 1% of bloggers). Other topics mentioned include opinions, volunteering, education, photography, causes and passions, and organizations.

………

The following demographic data comes from two surveys of internet users conducted in November-December 2005 and February-April 2006 (n=7,012).
The most distinguishing characteristic of bloggers is their youth. More than half (54%) of bloggers are under the age of 30. Like the internet population in general, however, bloggers are evenly divided between men and women, and more than half live in the suburbs. Another third live in urban areas and a scant 13% live in rural regions.

Another distinguishing characteristic is that bloggers are less likely to be white than the general internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are white, 11% are African American, 19% are English-speaking Hispanic and 10% identify as some other race. By contrast, 74% of internet users are white, 9% are African American, 11% are English-speaking Hispanic and 6% identify as some other race.