Archived Weblog Entry - 09/07/2004: "semantic Web"

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09/07/2004 Archived Entry: "semantic Web"

Semantic Web
Awhile back, I talked a bit about the semantic web as a cool media form for how it forges connections. Berners-Lee uses the word “cool” to describe the URI process functioning in his semantic web. Collin noted how critique of this kind of web is based on its commercial appeal. True. But I never find the commercial/consumer critique too convincing, for popular culture and entertainment - as McLuhan noted - often makes for a good place to think broadly about rhetoric and writing (and remember how off The Frankfurt School is in its critique of popular culture).
Pulling up Amazon today brings me a nice semantic list of items the site thinks I'll be interested in:

The Very Best of Elvis Costello CD.

HBO's Angels in America on DVD (I have no idea what this show is about; never saw it)

Lessig's The Future of Ideas

Kill Bill Volume 2 on DVD

Doom 3

The Passion of the Christ on VHS.

The last one is really interesting since:
1. My VCR is unplugged (probably for good)
2. I'm not a Christian

But what can we do with these kinds of lists? The Breton method is that whatever doesn't belong together will belong together when put together. So let’s put ‘em together, eh?

The idea would be to develop from an Amazon semantic list a writing project which asks the writers to first research (watch, listen, read) the items, detail their specificities, note various personal relationships/anecdotes related to the items, find the patterns amid the details. Use these patterns to form a new composition – preferably on the Web.
That pattern would be cool for how it prompts readerly and writerly involvement at the level of association and connection. It would not be argumentative nor explanatory, but performative and demonstrative. Only by writing and reading the connections does any form of knowledge or idea develop.

This kind of writing, then, seems more appropriate for utilizing the logic of the Web than a traditional “design a professional website” or ‘analyze a website” assignment located in some variation of the new media/digital writing class popular in many places. These other kinds of assignments fail to recognize the logic of new media, which I think a semantic type of writing does.