Steal This Blog

The disconnectedness one feels because of an inability to connect and gain insights from the multiple paths constituting the online self is amplified by the modern web browser being insensate to the learnings of the browser.

A blog covers a great deal of ground in allowing the linkage of thoughts into a (hopefully) consistent stream. It limits the flexibility of a reader in providing insight to the blogger to mostly comments.

A wiki, on the other hand, like wikipedia, allows free rein to reader and writer to work on a shared perception of online reality. As the anthropological viewpoint would have it, the observer changes the observed, and vice-versa. Thus, the web becomes more a 'MutualNet' rather than a 'LinkNet'

The sense of control/authorship is then a shared right - Skippy makes some interesting points on this idea. From a semiotic perspective, a reader has never had the ability to layer meaning on the material, unless he/she chose to annotate it, and thereby extend the material, while keeping the original material inviolate.

Jug Suraiya, a leading Indian columnist made a related point in his piece "Pinch This Column" where he invited readers to in effect, take his column and commit piracy on himself, as an act of atonement for his own pirate acts.

Perhaps I can take a tip from the 1970s American yippie leader Abbie Hoffman who titled his anti-establishment book 'Steal This Book'. Hoffman didn't want any part of the establishment to benefit - including that part which would earn royalties on his book.

So he exhorted his readers to steal it. The book became a beststealer, if not a bestseller, and made Abbie famous.

So be my guest. Feel free to steal this column, whenever and however frequently you like. No takers? Oh well. At least no one can say I didn't offer.

Taking his point up, one could potentially rewrite his column if it were a wiki. At best, one can only annotate it.

Contrast this idea with the oral tradition, where embellishment, and rewrites were what the audience expected, and a good storyteller was one, who in the telling of the tale, told a larger or different tale from the one he/she had heard.

Article Author: Aaman Lamba

Aaman Lamba is a Blogcritics editor, as well as the Publisher of Desicritics.org, a Blogcritics network site covering media, politics, culture, sports and more with a global South Asian focus

Visit Aaman Lamba's author page — Aaman Lamba's Blog