DLTQ.org

First: I am working on getting rid of my internet addiction.

Since 1995, when I first got online at a public library in Roskilde, I have been hooked. Not just to the internet, but to computing in general. Games. Social interaction. I started blogging in 1999, on livejournal, stopped, started again elsewhere, stopped, and in 2004 started again, on this DLTQ platform. 2004 was also the year I discovered videoblogging. Since then I have made hundreds of blog entries and published hundreds of videos. I helped organize VlogEurope 2005 in Amsterdam and 2007 in Heidelberg, and will also co-organize VE 2008 in Budapest (October 18th-19th).

I have read thousands of blog entries. I have often reminded me about the dltq core - Don’t Lose The Question. To not forget the basics because the stream of information keeps on moving. But the zeitgeist draws me in, the mood of the moment. Micro-second.

Yes, with twitter and similar micro-blogging services we have entered a phase with even shorter attention span. It’s like we are all on crack, the internet crack, and we cannot stop and pause very often.

Sometimes we do, and sometimes we write great blog entries as a result of it. But far too often, it just continues, faster and faster, ever more blog entries to scan, let the eye be trained to quickly disseminate the core of an entry in half a second. Interesting? Not?

As John said in his Information Dystopia promo “I didn’t go anywhere, I just stopped making videos”.

Do we become invisible if we stop posting new stuff? If we stop twittering, facebooking, friendfeeding, deliciousing, blogging, vlogging, commenting, linking, trackbacking, and jerking off to internet personas? Does that tree in the forest exist if nobody is there to observe?

The internet culture is very narcissistic, it breeds that narcissistic core in us, breeds it, breeds it, forces it forth. You can’t even link to something important without the focus on it being Who linked to it. You start a twitter meme, discussion, and before long it turns out that all it does is feed your own twitter-status. More links to your blog where you give more information. Subscribers. The attention hierarchy.

In 2005 when I started working for a blogging consultancy in Norway as a customer relations guy and “the blogging expert” to hold workshops for corporate/organizational clients, I kept asking myself these questions. How much does this organization Really want to break through the membrane between them and the public? What do they want to do with their blogging?

The questions grew, my doubt in my ability to show these people the potential of the medium grew, and I kept running around in circles. It stopped me, halted me, and I started to mumble. There was something about all of this that made me uneasy. Despite the potential. Despite the amazing potential this has for solving so many of our communication challenges.

Sometimes I meet a new person, and we go through the usual “So, what do you do?” and I tell them about what I do, my expertise, and what we in Visibility will do. I remember the last time I talked about this to a girl, mid 20s, studying sociology, and when I talked about this, her eyes lit up, and she said, “That’s so interesting“, and I was like “um, yeah, but”.

Why the but?

Is it the fear that we have been given a tool, like the fire, and all we use it for is to burn down the forest?

Is new media just going to turn into the old way of doing things, with a few twists? The attention hierarchy, the simplistic measures of success, the eternal quest for the Next question, the Next conversation topic, without really building on the previous ones, building on them, processing what we learned.

I don’t mean to be all sceptical, but the question has been with me: Why blog? Last year, after I was assaulted and suffered the head concussion, I had frequent sick-days (had severe nausea about once a week, making me unable to work for 1-2 days). The autumn I tried once again to be involved, and I started writing on Radikale.net which is the online forum for my political party. When October came, and the parliamentary elections were announced, I got involved with that, the videoblogging in politics, and we were a few people who made videos in our party that election, like in 2005 in Norway. The election results were not uplifting - our party lost some seats in parliament, and what we tried to do with our videos - talking with regular citizens about political issues - were not proving very successful. I still suffered from the nausea at times. I had quit my work in the academic bookstore because of the election work, and later that late autumn I decided to move towards new media again, and together with Mikkel Sarbo I eventually established Visibility (website coming soon).

This winter the situation back home got worse and my mother became entangled in a court case fighting over custody for her youngest son, my 14-year old brother. I did not do much to support her, not much I Could do from here, but it was all eating me up inside. A million little ants.

In May I got the opportunity to go to Georgia as an election observer and to do some video shooting. After I got back on June 4th I went into paralysis again, and it has kept me still for the last months.

Would you Blog about these issues? Or rather talk about it with a few friends you know well? My mother lost her court case, by the way, and she is now going through appeals process. My brother (a video of him from a few years ago here) is still living in this home for youths, where all the other inhabitants there are very mentally handicapped, scaring him. This all leads back to the 80s, a very different story, and our 1996 win of our case against the Norwegian government. Things that I do not blog about, partly because I don’t define myself in terms of those aspects of my background, and I rather prefer that others do not do so either.

Those who know me well, like A-K, K or P or even J, know of my relationship with my past, with organizations, and my own attempt to get rid of these eternal questions that riddle me. To me, videoblogging cannot ever be reduced to yet another distribution channel for the same attitude like earlier. There are companies and organizations that get that, and others that do not. I consider my job within Visibility to find ways to help them get it. That the blog is not just about You, it is neither a way to re-cycle articles written and published in national newspapers.

With one of our clients now the contact person really wants to understand and use the media to its fullest. The next weeks I will be busy working on that case, making sure that their corporate blog does its best. Next week I will also become more actively involved with Canal Africa, including my own show on there. With my background in internet video, broadcast tv is a new area. I will do my best to blend the two approaches.

To blog or not to blog. That is not the question. But it is often difficult for me to talk about whatever are the shiny new objects or interesting projects from around the world when my home area is troubled. It’s how I work, while I know others have no problem either blogging about externals (linkage) or internals (subjective storytelling) in their own crisis moments.

August is here, and it will be an exciting autumn. If all goes well, I will be going to Azerbaijan in October to cover their presidential election, there is VlogEurope 2008 in Budapest, and there are also the Visibility clients and Canal Africa station.

Sorry about this long, rambling post, but I think it is important for me to see this blog for what it is: A personal blog.

Hope you all have a fantastic sunday!

So, this is an idea that has been swimming around in my head for a long time: A global “army” of e-warriors of similar interest that join forces and create their own network, including their own massive data centres filled with animations, logos, videos from near and far, and where we constantly learn from each other.

In 2005, during the Norwegian parliamentary elections, we had a few visitors from abroad who came and helped us, boosting our morale as well as helping with more practical things.

This year, we also (I guess) had a few visitors coming to Denmark from abroad to help us.

But, how could we extend the level of commitment that people could enter from afar?

If a growing part of the election campaign is fought on the internet - what does that mean?

I have not, since my days in MOSAIC, been interested in pan-European issues - besides, of course, VlogEurope - and I suppose it is time to start again.

Overall, to see myself as part of a much, much bigger story. A small piece that can, nevertheless, do my share.

Click To Play

I have been thinking about “farming frames” lately. If you are familiar with WoW, you know of the importance of farming. Farming primals, or farming rep, or farming mats for flasks. Now, after quitting that game, I started wondering about ways to farm for frames, and seeing the video I shoot, publish and store as references I can use at a later stage, instead of separate “pieces of pure art” or entertainment created for the spur of the moment.

How often do you remix your own older matieral? Not often, right? Me neither.

There are a few things I need to do.

1) Put more of my old videos on blip.tv and consequently tag them, and tag them well. Hopefully I will then find a way to create a system of reference that I can easily tap into at a later stage.

2) Find a way to publish my more random frame-farming sessions without it interfering too much with my regular audience, who might be more interested in whatever is going on in my life, or who wants more edited material maybe. Maybe just publishing it on blip.tv without linking to it? It would be almost like publishing photos on flickr without linking to the photos or using them on my blog, right?

This video was shot on my way home from a very enjoyable evening, talking about videoblogging. Very meta. I thought a lot about videoblogging as a form of “digital storytelling” then, and I remembered some of the earlier works of JD Lasica, and his focus on digital storytelling.

Am I telling stories with these videos? Is that a primary goal? I like to think of it more as frame-farming now. I just happen to publish them for you all to browse as well - following your own interest.

But that requires a good taxonomy, right?

On Thursday, I will attend an event organized by Gyldendal, the biggest publisher in Denmark who also publishes the translated works of Norwegian author Erik Fosnes Hansen. The last days I have been reading Løvekvinden, which was published in Norway last year and will be published now on Friday, May 25th, here in Denmark.

I don’t know whether there will be any chance to ask questions to the author, and if so, what I would like to ask. I still have not finished the book - I started on it on friday - but it reminds me of books like the classic Frankenstein’s Monster: A story of how a person/being who is prosecuted because of their looks. Frankenstein because of his grotesque features, and Eva, the girl turning woman that this book is about, because of the golden fur that covers all of her body, even her face.

I read a Norwegian review of the book here, and I cannot help but agree with the reviewer. It seems that Erik Fosnes Hansen in this case chooses to dwell on - admittedly - an eternal topic, but does not really bring any current themes into it. Or maybe he does. Maybe this could be the story of how people, arabs for instance, are being branded in the media. This classic image comes to mind, the totally unflattering image of one of the people who is said to be behind the 9/11 atrocities. Maybe I will ask about this at the Gyldendal event, or maybe I will make a link to comments in the book by Karen Lisa Salamon, where she talks about how total control of our bodily hair growth is seen as necessary in order to appear clean, effective, progressive.

At least it will be interesting to see how a book that has undergone some months of criticism and discussion in my homeland Norway will - perhaps - be received differently here in Denmark. And who knows, maybe I will be allowed to take some footage from the event.

chaos
cityscape
scapegoat
purplerain
servicesecret
flimmerflicker
imagesglobal
immediatemoment
timetravel
bling-bling/glitterati
technorati/rate my videos based on how many thousands of viewers I have
videoblogging/blogging/web/log/logging our lives
second
time
lifetime
living/forward
symbolic violence
narration
narrative power games
the stories we tell each other at night
worldly
esoteric
exoteric
exotic
hiddenspring
copenhagen
summertorch
volleyball
now
soon
passport
norway
nationalism
flags
dresscode
codes of honor
covert action

inert

inert

inert

//
i move in to my new apartment next friday.