“ Describing a character over 300 pages is one thing—reducing yourself to three lines is another. GILES TURNBULL struggles with a writer’s greatest challenge: the byline.
A Writer by Any Other Name by Giles Turnbull - The Morning News
Identity and Play: Being, Online
Notes and resources for a lecture within the Creative Writing and New Media MA course at DMU.
Created and curated by Meg Pickard (blog)
Created and curated by Meg Pickard (blog)
“ But your blog doesn’t tell me what you can do or have done. All it does is tell me what you think and that you know how to surf the internet. Heck, even pointers to Channel 9 doesn’t tell me what you can do, or that you know how to think strategically, or that you can manage your time well, or that you can solve problems. All the Channel 9 links tell me is that you barely know how to use a camera and that you can kinda sorta interview people. It doesn’t even tell me if you were the one deciding who to interview. All I get from your blog is…well..nothing really from the standpoint of can you do a particular job. In fact if I go primarily from your blog I see someone who is very defensive when the heat is on. Can’t take criticism very well. Has trouble prioritizing his work. I’m unclear on whether your employers work is more important than your blog based on many of your past posts (”Way behind on my channel 9 duties…way behind on email…bla bla bla). I have no idea what your skills are other than you can name drop and,again, surf the internet and well, apparently know Dave Winer, whatever that buys me as an employee. It would seem the value I would get from hiring you based on your blog would be the same value a casino gets by hiring a retired boxer to be a greater. A high profile blogging geek name, but…well…what? Seriously, do you really think reading your blog gives a prospective employer a good reading on your skills and would allow that employer to find the right match for your…ummmm “skills”? By refusing to send me a resume my first thought would be… “what don’t you want me to know?” Comment by Dmad — June 18, 2006 @ 8:02 pm
Comment #22 on Yahoo recruiter wants my resume « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger
“ This is controversial, but here goes: I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.
Seth’s Blog: Why bother having a resume?
Meg’s homepage links, c.1994
Example: Identity constructed through activity
(please don’t laugh at my dodgy taste in music)
Example: identity via self-expression
Meg’s profile on LinkedIn.On Being Written
I am at a loss.
Here I sit, listening to pianoized Leonard Cohen,
Trying to wax romantic about my daily life.
Alright then: this is what it’s like.
“Wired,” I type a transcript of my
thoughts into a glaring screen.
Writing words I think I might have said
Given the chance -
But there’s always something off. Always fibbing,
Stretching just outside the bounds of my
Genuine state of being. And other people,
metres, miles away,
Read them off in the spirit written:
Transcript-like, dead, read on their glaring screen
They add a voice conjoured from the head that
Seems to match the texture of my words -
It’s like writing poems. There you are,
Reading these words, clawing desperate in mind
To find
The voice, my voice, that matches this tune.
It isn’t there.
If it was, you’d be writing these things,
not me - but I am.
I reserve the right to change my words at will.
but they are undeniably mine;
Which brings us back to the Golden Rule of
Digital Transactions:
You Own Your Own Words.
What that leaves out is that They own you,
Control the view of You,
and twist you into a product of imagination
Rooted in Seattle, San Francisco,
Rome, Japan.
Those places aren’t mine,
I am here, I am I,
But still they try
To project me onto their image of Knut-ness.
Fuck that.
You wanna know me, you trek over here,
We’ll talk over drinks and then you’ll hear
My poems rambling in your ear.
————-
Knut Mork. Oslo, Jan 20 1994. On assignment from Norwegian Broadcasting.
(I found this online in about 1997 - and managed to track it down again via the wayback machine’s cache.)
Definitions
Identity-based social networks
- I am who I say: person comes first
- Context-specific (e.g. work, school)
- Network is made up of relationships between people
- Connections are active and human
Interest-based social networks
- I am what I do or like or own: stuff comes first
- Can be subject-specific (e.g. music, design) or media-specific (e.g. photos, video)
- Network is made up of relationships between stuff - coincidental overlappings
- Connections are passive and automated (mostly)
Umberto Eco and His Travels in Hyperreality
In searching for “hyperreality,” or the world of “the Absolute Fake,” in which imitations don’t merely reproduce reality, but try improve on it, Umberto Eco discovered places which were based on, but better than reality.
Question: Could we say that the way people present themselves in identity-driven social networks is a form of “hyperreal” expression?
