May 29, 2005

Invented Eden is a book by Robin Hemley about a "Lost Tribe" of indigenous peoples discovered in the Philippines in the 1970's. The above title is also a department at the Smithsonian that was used to study "short-lived hunter-gatherer tribes" as they were discovered and then almost as quickly went extinct.

From the Authors Introduction:

ABC's 20/20, britains Central TV, the BBC, and PBS all did documentaries on the Tasaday, some in support of the hoax proponents, others favoring those who claimed the Tasady were "authentic," though the word "Authentic" leads to the question, Authentic what?

This book then, is an investigation not only of the Tasaday controversy but of the language we use to describe others. the story of The Tasaday is as much about us (the industrialized world), who we perceive ourselves to be, as it is about a band of 27 souls in the Philippines, who became stand-ins for the worlds hope dreams and fears.

I can't say I am loving the writing but I think the idea really dovetails with this new meme I have been smelling which is that blogging sucks.

How does it relate? I suppose to me the question of authenticity in an analysis of blogging inherent value would have to take apart the idea of "truth" and "self-presentation" as it functions in the blogospheres environment of both total media saturation and also sort of "extreme" individuization.

I always question whether my writing is authentic in this forum, because I am constantly aware that I am being observed by someone. In fact I was thinking of trying my hand at fiction, so that a) I would be writing for an invisible audience and in not in a text entry field immediately. and b) I could experiment with voices not immediately associated with my own experience.

Invented Eden reminds me, that cultures will always create mythological spaces in which "truth" is a commodity and "true truth" is in shorter supply than what we want to hear. I wonder if the problem people have with blogging is that it's claim to authenticity and individuality threatens a meme about the impossibility of that kind of authenticity existing in a media saturated environment.

Or is it that no-one is authentic on the web? This is straight out of my po-mo art theory classes, but I think there is a grain of truth here. We create identities for our on-line selves that fit inside the frame of the tools we are using to create the stories (blogs rss the 400 word story sound bite) and have not as much to do with the reality of our lived experiences as we think. Kind of like the Tasadays story as it compares to the reality of the Philippines indegenous peoples actual history. Which is laced throughout with a history of colonization and control.

Which brings me to the next item on my list and my new category heading: from Ned. Things that come from Ned now have their own category, I feel he deserves it, he spends so much more time looking for the good stuff on the internet, while I just fuss about writing blog entries. This is my first post with a from Ned categorization but doubtless not the last.

So last night we watched this sad, scary and funny Flash animation about Googles eventual take-over of the entire world

And again it made me think of the Tasaday and this time about how they were thought to be "off the grid" and how that fired the publics imagination. Here was a band of people who still wore leaves and didn't have guns or sample size bottles of shampoos or burt reynolds, who were pure and unsullied and "Good". The public wanted to see authenticity on that level because they were already dealing with the vietnam war and watergate etc..

I am struggling to find words to explain why I see the discussion of bloggings political and cultural merits as naive like the Tasaday and also kind of a hoax, but without actually saying it that way because I truly do love this forum for human expression. I just can't look at it as the saviour of information politics.

En plus; now our choice isn't whether we want our experience of the world mediated through a giant living breathing syndication engine, it's what kind of media syndication and search universe we want... What's going to happen to experiences that don't fit into an RSS feed, or a pod-cast?

Continued from main page..