Blogging, Modernity and Space

So where do I start? I have to admit that the ideas that I want to write about have been percolating in my head for the better part of the last ten years. Furthermore, this is not the first time that I have convinced myself that I should start blogging. The problem that I keep running into is that my writings cover a wide range of topic areas that, I believe, are related, but the exact relationship continues to elude me. Hence there is no real starting point. Or, to be more precise, I don’t know where to start!

With that in mind I am going to be true to the process of blogging itself by not thinking too much about what it is that I want to say. I will just start saying things and hope that in due course it all starts to make some sense – especially to me!

Part of the reason that I have not systematically blogged in the past is that my self imposed requirement to maintain a high quality level with respect to my content has resulted in my putting too much pressure on myself. The end result has just been that I have decided to stop the process.

Furthermore, I have, in the past, wanted to see immediate results from my blogging. My expectation was that I was going to connect with lots of neat people right away. Although I did see some results, they weren’t as stellar as I would have hoped. Hence this time around I am going to write for myself, but in a public forum.

What is noteworthy about this decision is that it is an illustration of one of the themes that I am interested in, the way that MODERNITY IS TRANSFORMING THE NOTION OF SPACE. One notes that in my deciding to write from a PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE within a PUBLIC SPHERE, I am doing something that couldn’t have been done at any previous point in history. In the past one could store ones ideas on paper (after paper was invented!), but the range of possible observers of ones work was quite limited. It is likely that the paper was stored somewhere and that, at the least, an organized effort needed to be made in order to make it possible for others to view what one had written. When one blogs on the other hand, what one writes is a POTENTIAL OBJECT OF CONSCIOUSNESS in a way that is distinct from the way that it has ever been in the past.

(At this stage I want to make a methodological point whic is that you will note that certain words or terms are emphasized in BOLD. The reason I do this is that these represent KEY CONCEPTS that will be expanded upon in due course and therefore are ideas that you can start thinking about. One can imagine how, as this blog evolves, the KEY CONCEPTS can be hyperlinked to a more detailed explication of the concept. Within each concept there will be other hyperlinked concepts and therefore, the sum total of the content will represent a WEB OF THOUGHT where all concepts are defined in relation to each other.)

Back to the topic at hand, the relationship between MODERNITY and POTENTIAL OBJECTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS… I suppose that it behooves me to say a few words about MODERNITY before proceeding. By MODERNITY I do not mean anything exceedingly complex. I am just referring to the world that we live in today, the modern world, so to speak. It should be noted that it is generally assumed that there is a relationship between MODERNITY and PROGRESS. At least this is what HEGEL thought. His way of thinking about the evolution of history was that it was RATIONAL, in some sense. I do not believe that there is any reason to assume this to be the case de facto. For example, or collective behaviour with respect to the climate change issue reveals that we did not act rationally from a collective perspective. If we had, we would not have been in this mess!

One feature of MODERNITY, however, that is unique to the modern world is the ubiquity of technology in general and the COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE, in particular. The wide availability of networked communication makes it such that we are PRESENT in relation to each other in a way that is different from the way it has ever been in the past.

(I now need to make another methodological point which is that you will have to forgive the way that I am writing. I am aware that I began by introducing the notion of SPACE, then started talking about MODERNITY and am now talking about the COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE. This may be confusing for you, but after musing on these topics for as long as I have it seems to be the method of communication that works best for me. This is to say that in developing a WEB OF THOUGHT one is developing a set of CONCEPTS and defining RELATIONS between these CONCEPTS. In doing this there are two approaches that can be taken. Philosophers tend to try to be as rigourous as possible and some of the work that will be presented will be of this form. Experience has taught me, however, that ones readership is inversely proportional to the amount of philosophical rigour that one utilizes. If one wants lots of people to read ones work, then one must write in a style that is readable. Therefore I will, most of the time, sacrifice rigour in favour of readability with a view to MOVING THE CONSCIOUSNESS of the reader, for that is all that I believe is possible.}

So let me wrap up this initial teaser by noting that blogging is a feature of MODERNITY and its force in our lives would not be the same if it were not for the fact that COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE were completely ubiquitous. Therefore, we can also see that the fact that the range of POSSIBLE OBJECTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS is dependent upon the nature of the COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE.

In short, the internet makes it possible for us to be conscious in a way different from any other point in the course of human history and it is exceedingly imperative at this stage in our evolution that we closely examine what we mean by this and why it is important!!