The Gates Ajar, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's spiritualist novel of 1868, is about the internet. How so? Allegorically and with a keen foresight. The internet is as desirous of its users' privacy as Phelps's characters are of contact with the dead. Arguing about privacy on the internet and tracing the latest means by which it is being stolen is as pointless, repetitive, and obscure as the religious rhetoric of Phelps's characters.What this means, at least for me, is that I much prefer to read confounding books than to be confounded by having all my accounts and internet guises inexplicably connected against my wishes.
Since youtube and facebook continually demand to be "merged" with my google/blogspot shenanigans, I'm giving up on keeping the gates ajar, Phelps.
That is, as much as I enjoy discovering new blogs and having visitors drop by here, that pleasure is definitely outweighed by the fear of a Kafkaesque trial at a job interview for accidentally ambiguous wording of a post or for what I did on Thursday, May 20, 2010.
I'm not closing this blog but locking it via the invitations option. If you'd like a key, write a comment under this post in the next two days or email me.
I hate you, evolution of the internet.
Since youtube and facebook continually demand to be "merged" with my google/blogspot shenanigans, I'm giving up on keeping the gates ajar, Phelps.
That is, as much as I enjoy discovering new blogs and having visitors drop by here, that pleasure is definitely outweighed by the fear of a Kafkaesque trial at a job interview for accidentally ambiguous wording of a post or for what I did on Thursday, May 20, 2010.
I'm not closing this blog but locking it via the invitations option. If you'd like a key, write a comment under this post in the next two days or email me.
I hate you, evolution of the internet.
3 comments:
Gis a key!
I just extended an invite to my blog to someone, only to belatedly realise that the Google/Blogger thing meant that I had effectively handed over my real name. Worked out well in this instance, but ehhhhhhhh!
There was a great TV doc a few years ago about how the development of the telephone and radio influenced spiritulaism. If you can talk to people on other continents, why can't you talk to the dead?
I may do this when I have the time:
http://www.mamablogga.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-migrating-from-blogger-to-wordpress/
I don't like wordpress any more than blogspot. I moved from w to b and haven't regretted it, really.
I think they're paring down privacy everywhere: if they don't have your real identity, they will insist that you connect accounts...
Hm... when I got an invitation from you, it didn't contain your real name, I don't think. If that's changed now, it's scary :-(
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