I grok therefore I am
Jun. 2nd, 2005 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe internet is full of faddish new ways to organise information, most of it entirely useless. Grokker, still in beta, proposes itself as "a new way to look at search" offering, thanks to an interface of clickable bubbles and blobs, "broad exploration, unexpected discovery, deep understanding". Like all ambitious search tools, Grokker dreams of entering the language as a new verb, asking us to "grok the web" and titling its search box "I grok".
I grok, therefore I am? Let's try the ego-surf test; I'm ideally-suited, because I'm pretty obscure and arcane. Typing "Momus" into the box, I get a sparkly coloured line and the message "grokking". Then there I am, a series of grokky blobs in yukky colours, ganging up on the only blob that isn't me, the poor old Greek god Momus, who would be forced into a corner by the plurality of grokked me-Momae if Grokker hadn't banished all corners, replacing them with sinister groke-grey grok crop circles.
Ah, but wait, Grok tools allow me to see the same information in Mondrian-Albers-style squares, or in pastel shades on a white ground! One thing I can't see, though, is what other grokkers grokked. There's no sidebar telling me "Other grokkers grokking this also grokked..." The last fancy blobby search tool let me do that, but I can't remember its name right now. I probably won't remember Grokker in a couple of months either.
I'm bored with grokking, but I still want to know who I am. I could use Googlism, one of the more useful search gimmicks, based as it is on all statements about the search term which contain the word "is". I like Googlism, despite the fact that it quickly establishes me as "a sex tourist" and "deplorable" (for balance, I'm also "so funny", "fabulous", a "pop star" and "a genius"... and finally, simply, "a musician").
But enough about me — what about the collectivist oriental philosophy that says that who we are is defined not by unique individual traits but our membership of communities and groups? Parsing more traditional websites like Amazon and iTunes and scanning the "similar artists" and "customers also bought / viewed" sections, I learn that I'm a different entity in different countries.
Amazon UK's Otto Spooky page tells me that British buyers of my album also purchased music by Anna Domino, Paul Haig, Cristina, Billy Mackenzie and Woodbine. It's a good and telling list, putting me firmly in my historical place as a fringe member of the Scottish post-punk new pop scene, flirting with (but not signing to) the Postcard and Crepuscule labels, close to indie-exotic gay and girlish confectioners of euro-lounge music.
Over in America, I'm suddenly a trad Scot. At department store Barnes and Noble Momus records appeal to people who buy Celtic lays from a ludicrously Caledonian cast: The Beta Band, Highland Bagpipes (specifically their "Highland Christmas" album, hoots!), The Proclaimers, The Average White Band and Donovan. What, no Andy Stewart? Clearly if I title my next album "Donald, Where's Yer Troosers" I'll make a killing in the Scottish diaspora.
I grok, therefore I am? Let's try the ego-surf test; I'm ideally-suited, because I'm pretty obscure and arcane. Typing "Momus" into the box, I get a sparkly coloured line and the message "grokking". Then there I am, a series of grokky blobs in yukky colours, ganging up on the only blob that isn't me, the poor old Greek god Momus, who would be forced into a corner by the plurality of grokked me-Momae if Grokker hadn't banished all corners, replacing them with sinister groke-grey grok crop circles.
Ah, but wait, Grok tools allow me to see the same information in Mondrian-Albers-style squares, or in pastel shades on a white ground! One thing I can't see, though, is what other grokkers grokked. There's no sidebar telling me "Other grokkers grokking this also grokked..." The last fancy blobby search tool let me do that, but I can't remember its name right now. I probably won't remember Grokker in a couple of months either.
I'm bored with grokking, but I still want to know who I am. I could use Googlism, one of the more useful search gimmicks, based as it is on all statements about the search term which contain the word "is". I like Googlism, despite the fact that it quickly establishes me as "a sex tourist" and "deplorable" (for balance, I'm also "so funny", "fabulous", a "pop star" and "a genius"... and finally, simply, "a musician").
But enough about me — what about the collectivist oriental philosophy that says that who we are is defined not by unique individual traits but our membership of communities and groups? Parsing more traditional websites like Amazon and iTunes and scanning the "similar artists" and "customers also bought / viewed" sections, I learn that I'm a different entity in different countries.
Amazon UK's Otto Spooky page tells me that British buyers of my album also purchased music by Anna Domino, Paul Haig, Cristina, Billy Mackenzie and Woodbine. It's a good and telling list, putting me firmly in my historical place as a fringe member of the Scottish post-punk new pop scene, flirting with (but not signing to) the Postcard and Crepuscule labels, close to indie-exotic gay and girlish confectioners of euro-lounge music.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 10:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 10:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 10:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 12:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-03 02:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-03 05:36 am (UTC)linking to here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momus_%28musician%29
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 01:13 pm (UTC)She is momentarily shocked, but sure she has misheard. However, she listens to more of your work, and realizes the depths of your lyrical obsession with jizz (climaxing, of course, in "Cumming in a Girl's Mouth"). But she cannot bring herself to send it back to Barnes and Noble for credit, nor to angrily bin it. No. She finds herself listening to Momus all the time... in the morning, when she's painting on her red eyebrows, her eyes in the vanity mirror languid pools. At night, her three cats draped across her lap. She whispers, "Thank you, Momus..."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 03:06 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2005/04/06/
For future reference, it's terribly easy to find anything written on Click Opera. Just google (don't grok) on the subject, then add imomus:
saul bellow imomus
brought the above reference in 0.03 seconds.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 03:22 pm (UTC)Thank you
Date: 2005-06-02 04:43 pm (UTC)I wanted to read your obituary again because I remember you describing him as being a "humanist pope" to you. Obviously, one can't rule out the possibility of the old unreliable narrator routine, but in Humbolt's Gift, Charlie's musings and outpourings on the mysteriousness, the transcendence and importance of goodness, beauty and soul and such seem so heartfelt, and his scorn for (well, amusement at) 19th and 20th century intellectualism and positivism so brilliantly put that I'm left thinking that Bellow leaned towards a conception of the human as far beyond the physical, or at least strongly desired that it should be so.
Well, you've read more of him than I have, and his essays too no doubt - if it's not too much trouble, could you tell me more about his position on such matters as religion and science? I've come to what I feel to be a definite conclusion after Humbolt, but what you wrote leaves me thinking I have perhaps misunderstood Bellow.
Re: Thank you
Date: 2005-06-02 06:12 pm (UTC)Re: Thank you
Date: 2005-06-02 06:18 pm (UTC)I have my own problems with humanism, precisely because I see it not as absent of religious sentiment, but rather too full of it!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 02:23 pm (UTC)i do. but only because i listened to it for the second time recently and thought it was you agian!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 09:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 07:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-03 09:04 pm (UTC)True as it is, they are a bit slow, but the database got so many essays on tons of genres which makes it worth the time anyhow!
Grok
Date: 2005-06-02 07:09 pm (UTC)I'm off to do it now!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 08:05 pm (UTC)Franz Ferdinand
The Magnetic Fields
The Shins
Air
Modest Mouse
Not a great deal more accurate--though it does appear that you and Stephen Merritt are each others' doppelgaengers (evil twins?).
Who buys music from Barnes and Noble anyway? I think you're dealing with a statistically negligible sampling group there.
-Ben