This originally appeared in a private group on yahoo groups, I wrote it and it stands as an open invitation to all my fellow workshoppers et al, and most of this will seem out of context to my regular visitors.
The mile of posts behind this one are all very thought provoking and have reinforced my commitment to share with everyone an idea and commitment I'd like to share with everyone.
So, being an active participant in the world of Information Technology (or computers as most say--I am labeled a System Administrator in my "profession", and I work for City Year a non-profit in Boston. And you can do a web search and read more about that somewhere else), and a recent participant in this past summer's #1 workshop, I would like to offer an alternative to this forum here on the yahoo groups, more of a supplement, not meant to usurp, although I'm open to that.
My thinking is that while this(sensorium) is an excellent opportunity to share thoughts and discuss ideas, outrages, concerns, challenges, work, problems, war, peace, hate, anger, politics, fear, or rather very simply (or not so simply) life. I was thinking perhaps we should open this up to public commentary and criticism, time to stop living in a box if you will, albeit from the sounds of it none of you do live in a box, but I think "sensorium" does to a large degree, and I think we are missing the opportunity to share with the world at a crucial time (which is now...and hence...always).
Mind that I have just finished reading David Bohm's work "On Dialogue" (or rather one form of it), so I might be overfull of idealism and perhaps a bit of naiveté, so consider this more as a proposal or an option not as an "alternative" as I don't mean it that way.
Lately, I have succumbed to the world of the weblog, and I realized that "sensorium" is a rather crude (and annoyingly sponsored) form of weblog. There are many takes on what a weblog is or isn't and I won't go to deeply into that, what I will say is that I think "sensorium" is one and I've found and am willing to finance an alternative. Yes, I said finance, but it is really not a big deal and I'll not ask anything of you all, at least until I run out of $$ completely or die, whichever comes first.
The neat thing about this other place is that I think it would provide a forum that is closer to Bohm's definition or idea of a "dialogue". And I am very much interested in trying this, and if anyone else is willing I have already begun here http://www.emptyhighway.com . There you'll find the crude default design of the weblog content management system (I know it sounds scarily technical...and to some degree it is, but I’ll worry about the scary part) or website as you have it. Check it out explore, it no new thing in the world of web as you'll find out if you visit some of my links, and my posts (currently) won't necessarily interest you, however, as many have said already the power of sensorium is in the sheer diversity of voices.
That is what we're all interested in right, despite the desire for censorship and feelings of hurt that have gone before this, we all desire to attain some degree of understanding between one another, not necessarily agreement. Agreement is overrated if you ask me (of course you didn't...but I told you anyway...ha!). As an example of the potential of the range of voices that are out there, perhaps you could visit the following site http://www.metafilter.com .
I also, am not suggesting that we send an e-mail out to the world inviting them to our website, as I don't think they'd listen anyways, but I think that being there (in the public forum), eventually our potential to engage a larger part of the world and interest them in art and ideas and life, as we all are so very very interested in, we could perhaps change the tone of the world.
So, here are the gory details of what I can do. I have a domain name www.emptyhighway.com (as I've said) we are open to having any "sub-domains" we want. What does this mean you ask? (Thinking perhaps to yourself, this man is a blatant technophile and hardly an artist-well we'll see won't we?) It means that we could choose a name, and not very many people would have opportunity to have input in the first name that we choose, but names are impermanent and easily changed, to get us started we can choose anything under the sun that would fit before my domain name. And I'm thinking of buying the .org as well in case the .com thing bothers anyone, in which case it would all wind up in the same place (again don't worry about that piece).
The most obvious domain name for me, would be sensorium.emptyhighway.com (visit http://www.emptyhighway.com/sensorium for an example sensorium.emptyhighway.com will take a day or two to activate across the internet ) Which would cause less headache for us all as a decision has been made, again names are a difficult thing, as I'm sure you all are aware with your own works, children, etc., but if there are fewer options, sometimes it easier to jump write into the work as we would have it. So, there you have it, I have a name and I could activate it momentarily if you so desired.
The next thing, how it works. Well, it's very much like this. You can either e-mail an address (although I haven't fully tested that yet... i am very confident it will work just fine) or you log on to this site http://www.emptyhighway.com/mt/mt.cgi and make a new post.
Setting it up would take some time and I would have to design a fairly simple and non-partisan space for dialogue to take place, always open to change and suggestions of course, but it could be ready to use as early as tomorrow. All you would have to do is e-mail me and let me know that you wanted to participate and I'd create the space, then the logins and send you your temporary password and the username you can pick your self if you'd like. In fact I may just do that tomorrow anyway. We'll see. I know many of us do not participate in these web forums anyway, and my idea is that, perhaps, if Rose and Claire were willing to share the addresses of everyone (their pick) I could send that person physical copies of the monthly archives of posts to share with them via "snail mail" as some refer to it.
Keep an open mind when thinking about this and I'll be open to your replies refusals or over joy. Also, keep in mind that this will be available to anyone at large in the world to comment, albeit there are numerous ways to "censor" people, and being a group of people committed to ...something...well we might have to block rancorous non-workshoppers from commenting were they to get nasty, but I think only if they got nasty...or commercial. I don't know what you'll all think so I'll leave it at that. I am rather long winded when I do finally post, and I'm sure your eyes are already anticipating the end of this sentence, so bye.
Oops almost forgot, images would also be possible and less restrictive, but I think those might need to be held under lock and key to some degree and don't know the best way to do that today, but I'll get back to you tomorrow. Be Well.
Love,
Wayne....and Tracie...and our cat Tatum.
I have yet to visit the sensorium page or what ever it is in technical terms, simply because I do not have the address...In any event, I thought I would try this out. Did you enjoy Bohm's "On Dialogue" I am currently reading Wholeness and the Implicate Order, by David Bohm. Much of the work I am doing centers around some of the concepts and ideas broought out in that book. Anyway, he is very insightful and very important to many of our current situations, and to the ones which are hopefully created in the future. being general and vague...Iknow and apologize. anyway, I'm up for this weblog...