Correspondence.

Correspondence. [Mark Federman, who was quoted in "The Medium is theMoblog" by Gary Mielo in the January 2005 ETC ETC - ExTendible Compiler. Fortran-like, macro extendible. "ETC - An Extendible Macro-Based Compiler", B.N. Dickman, Proc SJCC 38 (1971). , sent the followinge-mail response to the author.] Dear Gary, A nice article. Thanks for sending it. However, you (and/or theeditor) made a very serious error in quoting--or rather, misquoting,from my blog. Blogging is NOT an instance of publicity as you have it inthe article, but rather "publicy." Publicity relies on thenotion of the public, which was created with the "invention"of the private mind and privacy that accompanied the Gutenberg press. "Publicy"--think of the word as publicity without"it,"--"it" being the Gutenberg world of print--isthe reversal of privacy, that is, outering of the inner mind, throughthe acceleration and amplification of voice under what McLuhan calledelectric conditions, one of which would be the weblog See blog and Web log. (World-Wide Web) weblog - (Commonly "blog") Any kind of diary published on the World-Wide Web, usually written by an individual (a "blogger") but also by corporate bodies. . Publicy exists ina world of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity. I hope that any online archive of the article can be corrected, andthat a correction can be printed in the next issue. Misstating a memeoutered via publicy is the wrong type of publicity. MARK FEDERMAN CHIEF STRATEGIST MCLUHAN PROGRAM IN CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, Editor's Note Editor's Note (foaled in 1993 in Kentucky) is an American thoroughbred Stallion racehorse. He was sired by 1992 U.S. Champion 2 YO Colt Forty Niner, who in turn was a son of Champion sire Mr. Prospector and out of the mare, Beware Of The Cat.Trained by D. : We checked with the author concerning the misused word, and hereported that while he had indeed used the correct word,"publicy," in the original document, that word wassurreptitiously sur��rep��ti��tious?adj.1. Obtained, done, or made by clandestine or stealthy means.2. Acting with or marked by stealth. See Synonyms at secret. replaced with the more common "publicity" bythe autocorrect feature of his spell checker A separate program or word processing function that tests for correctly spelled words. It can test the spelling of a marked block, an entire document or group of documents. Advanced systems check for spelling as the user types and can correct common typos and misspellings on the fly. . We've had our ownadventures with spell checkers, and we strongly recommend not using theautocorrect feature for this very reason. In fact, we suggest usingspell checkers with caution and urge extra suspicion of grammarcheckers, which can offer weak and sometimes inaccurate alternatives,especially when faced with long sentences like this one, full ofsesquipedalian ses��qui��pe��da��lian?n.A long word.adj.1. Given to the use of long words.2. Long and ponderous; polysyllabic.Noun 1. words. For example, my spell checker didn't like "which wethought readers might enjoy." The suggested alternative?"which we thought-readers might enjoy." Now we think theeditors of ETC have worked pretty hard to understand human nature, butthought reading? Not yet, anyway! On his blog site, Mark Federman offers more on blogging andpublicy, which we thought our readers might enjoy. Blogging and Publicy David Weinberger has this piece commenting on Rebecca Blood'sarticle in The Guardian that is a mixed review of blogs and blogging. Onone hand, Blood seems to be saying that bloggers who see themselves assome sort of pioneer are misguided and our enthusiasm is overblown o��ver��blown?v.Past participle of overblow.adj.1. a. Done to excess; overdone: overblown decorations.b. . Onthe other, she says, "A weblog is something fundamentally new ...and those who try to define the phenomenon in terms of currentinstitutions are completely missing the point." While she seems ata bit of a loss to put her finger on what makes blogs so unique in ourexperience, she closes with the observation that "weblogs havechanged personal publishing See blog, wiki and citizen journalism. so profoundly that the old rules no longerapply. We are at the beginning of a new age of online publishing--and Ipredict that this generation of online pamphleteers is just the firstwave." Weinberger then takes issue with her use of the termpamphleteers. But perhaps the application of a little McLuhan can helpclear up the problem. Blogs are an instance of "publicy"--the McLuhan reversalof "privacy"--that occurs under the intense acceleration ofinstantaneous communications. Our notion of privacy was created as anartifact A distortion in an image or sound caused by a limitation or malfunction in the hardware or software. Artifacts may or may not be easily detectable. Under intense inspection, one might find artifacts all the time, but a few pixels out of balance or a few milliseconds of abnormal sound of literacy--silent reading lead to private interpretation ofideas that lead to private thoughts that lead to privacy. Blogging is an"outering" of the private mind in a public way (that in turnleads to the multi-way participation that is again characteristic ofmulti-way instantaneous communications.) Unlike normal conversation thatis essentially private but interactive, and unlike broadcast that isinherently not interactive but public, blogging is interactive, publicand, of course, networked--that is to say, interconnected. There are many other aspects to, and instances of, publicy besidesblogging, of course. But blogging is perhaps the most vivid example ofpublicy of mind that represents the outering of stream of consciousnessor inner dialogue. The retrieval of pamphleteers (not pamphlets themselves, but thepeople and the act of pamphleteering) is particularly interesting, as itwas the pamphleteers all the way back to the 16th century who wereagitators for societal change in everything from educational policy togovernment. Marshall McLuhan Noun 1. Marshall McLuhan - Canadian writer noted for his analyses of the mass media (1911-1980)Herbert Marshall McLuhan, McLuhan did his Ph.D. dissertation themed on onesuch early pamphleteer pam��phlet��eer?n.A writer of pamphlets or other short works taking a partisan stand on an issue.intr.v. pam��phlet��eered, pam��phlet��eer��ing, pam��phlet��eersTo write and publish pamphlets. in The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning ofHis Time. Nashe's pamphleteering focused on the controversy betweenpublic education as delivered by the Church, and the emergence of thenew liberal arts liberal arts,term originally used to designate the arts or studies suited to freemen. It was applied in the Middle Ages to seven branches of learning, the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. . Given the effects of bloggers that we have observed over the pastcouple of years (e.g. blogs used to give a new dimension ofparticipation in an expanded classroom, the fate of Sen. Lott, theHoward Dean Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American politician and physician from the U.S. state of Vermont, and currently the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the central organ of the Democratic Party at the national level. Experience) the retrieval of pamphleteers strikes me asparticularly apt. "What is the Message?" http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/blogger/2003_12_01_blogarchive.html.