Philolog

Since in the inaugural posts, my colleague has set the tone with both the question of whether there were blog equivalents in the ancient world and some ambitious suggestions concerning connectivity in criticism, I thought I would add some related and no less ambitious thoughts on blogging and philosophy.

First off, as has been mentioned, blogs regularly record ephemera in a periodic fashion; that is, they are a web-based log or collection--continuous but episodic--of daily events. These daily records and reflections are typically presented in reverse chronological order, and the less recent logs are archived and stamped with static links so the collector or web-logger can organize and establish connections between daily episodes. The web-logger looks to collect, organize, and comment upon particular daily events for an audience according to particular principles--an underlying coherence of things--with which that audience sympathizes. If you believe, let's say, in the fundamental pleasures of food and reading, you might frequent this community of readers. Neoconservatives of the American right might frequent blogs organized around principles of free markets and hawkish foreign policy, while underlying principles of anti-globalization and de-escalation might attract readers of a more progressive character (and there are far too many of both to link to here). Then there are web-loggers who collect and comment upon issues for people who look way beyond four-year election cycles to underlying principles of ecology and long-term sustainability. Simply put, web-loggers of all sorts provide collections, connections between, and commentaries on the events of our daily lives according to the ways in which they (and their readers) see the world as being constituted; they provide a system and logic for apprehending the world.

This art of logging and logicizing, minus permalinks and feed readers, although no less performative or sensational, was to be found in the ancient world. In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, profoundly experimental figures like Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles investigated the world--both the things, phenomena, and sorts of people in it--in an effort to uncover underlying and organizing principles which guide the cosmos and daily life. The varying accounts of these principles were systematic and comprehensive, argumentative, and highly critical both of other accounts and of those who do not seek to give an account. And lest you think even this criticism belonged merely to a world of academic squabbles among impotent scholars of pure inquiry, these comprehensive, critical accounts were a kind of competitive, public performance which often attracted audiences and more importantly aimed at establishing a practical way of living. A way of looking at the world and oneself in the world might have a beneficial effect on the daily lives of those brave enough to adopt it. Finding and adopting the right principles of connection and organization might make you a better person. On the other hand, failing to examine and find the right logic of life might damage your soul.

The trick in the ancient world was not merely to find the right account (which is difficult enough), but then to shape even the smallest habits according to it. Heraclitus writes, "Men always prove to be uncomprehending of the logos (or account of principles) which is as I described it, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this logos, men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep." To comprehend the account is to live according to the account and to work at not forgetting it in your waking hours; in short, to take hold of the account is to take hold of your life. This is where our story departs, in part, from the modern art of logging and logicizing, for blogging does not provide the means for self-evaluation; in fact, for anyone who has religiously followed a blog (especially one which is updated frequently), blogging often offers a distraction from small habits, another way of forgetting. This love of the log--this philology--has turned away from self-examination and scrutinization.

But not to fret, for my ambitious plan may be more a modest proposal given advancements in the world of web-logging. Have you heard of cyborglogs or glogs: these blogs record both a daily episode and a recorder who while recording participates in that episode. The glogger in most cases becomes unaware of his glogging, hence the classification of ''cyborg'' which means merely an unconscious and effortless communion between technology and user. Our daily life teems with examples of this communion even of the glogging type: ambulatory physiological data recorders continuously document for cardiologists both the voltage of an ailing heart via an ECG and the simultaneous activity of a patient via video. Running enthusiasts now record speed, heart rate, position and elevation via GPS and physiological monitors which they then upload for a training history and evaluation. Prosthetic assistive technologies for the visually impaired glog to provide spatial coordinates and facial recognition capacities. Researchers at Stanford's Thinking Aloud and Looking aHEAD at Museum Learning project glog in order to study how people learn in museums: visitors comment on exhibits while head cameras record what they are seeing and saying. People everywhere are already logging information about their daily activities and themselves engaged in those activities within particular parameters. They are making connections between habits and thoughts, habits and health.

My proposal: the Ambulatory Logography Device (ALD). The ALD is a wearable recorder that generates a personal diary for the purpose of directing attention back to the daily habits of your waking hours; the user interface consists of multiple recording tracks for both instantaneous commentary and subsequent reviews of both the day and commentaries producing another sort of omni-commentary. Other research is currently exploring the processes of continuous archiving and retrieval of personal experiences, and some like that of Gordon Bell of the MyLifeBits Project go as far as to archive an entire life from photos, phone calls, emails, IM transcripts... The ALD, however, focuses not only on retrieving the episodes of your daily life, but scrutinizing them and looking for your glaring inconsistencies and subtle coherence, the illusions you entertain, the self-images you try to project, and the self-images you truly project.

Have you ever felt uneasy at the sound of your own voice coming from the answering machine? Have you ever squirmed upon seeing yourself in a home movie? Imagine watching and hearing yourself in every conversation you had today. Imagine watching yourself rolling out of bed. Imagine watching yourself not accomplishing something you tell yourself you need to do, and hearing your reasons (which perhaps seemed rational at the time) for not doing it. How fragmentary or coherent is your vision of your world and yourself? How arbitrary your choices? How brave? How vigilant? How successful? There is your life, ready for you to log, to glog, ready to be made into a story, an account of all things. Wearing the ALD, you are aware of how you perform your day; moreover, the device operates within a feedback loop which makes you assess your performance of daily life before you have even recorded it. Knowing you are performing makes you a better performer. This philology may be more difficult to swallow, for it is an incredibly disconcerting effort which will potentially trigger feelings of intense dissatisfaction; but it is a love of or rather a desire for a life, our life, to mean something coherent, to consist of deliberate choices and decisions. This philology is the desire for our lives to be well-crafted works of art.