Blogs are primary sources of sovereign minded thoughts-- addressed to defined audiences.

7-14-07 [+] Picture of CI head cooling box.

I looked at this thread in CF in an earlier post. [+] I wrote that "There are a lot of angles on this that I want to talk about but I'll pick just one. FPatrol doesn't "get it" in terms of what he's doing or saying-- in the context of a public forum. He imagines he's talking TO Maxim. He's not. Ultimately he is talking to the AUDIENCE-- and so by "terminating" the conversation-- he is, IN FACT, ducking out on the audience. And in this exchange, then, it is Maxim who "wins" the debate."

Lately, I'm more interested in how the various cryonics players are participating or not-- in the "new media" of the internet-- and associated tools. As many readers know, I've been fascinated with the threaded forum by N54 for a long time-- and lately I've been just as energized and inspired by the refined tools on blogs-- especially alphabetical tags-- mostly aptly assembled by blogger.com-- and Google.

On this particular matter-- the aspect that intrigues me is the lack of awareness of FPatrol to WHO he's addressing. Ideally, all posters to forums ought to write TO an imagined audience of peers-- like a JURY. FPatrol ought to argue his case to the "audience-jury" RATHER than address himself to Maxim directly. Similarly, Maxim would do the same-- and I believe she HAS been doing that MORE than others in ColdFilter. You can detect that frame of awareness in her own originated threads.

The question of who we think we're writing for is particular poignent in MY case-- where I'm blogging apparently out there into thin air-- or a vacuum. I don't consider THAT to be true. The frame I use is one that flickers between, say, some cryonicists who I know read me-- and reasonable imaginary people who might happen to find me here-- who are NOT involved in cryonics. So I always try to write with enough references to things that a generally well-read person can get a grip on.

Steve Harris is a surprisingly POOR writer in that regard. He addressed Maxim exclisively in his rounds on CF last week-- and never once looked at the audience-- and did a paragraph for the general reader. Because he doesn't care. He's not in the business of making what he does understandable to a wider audience. You can see evidence that EVERYONE in cryonics has stopped writing for general audiences by looking at the latest editions of Cryonics magazine from Alcor-- which turned into a promo brochure modelled on the fake "magazine" put out of LEF-- which is in fact a catalog.

So FPatrol's blowing off of Maxim is REALLY a blowing off of readers. And this demonstrates a daftness of sorts in FPatrol. It's a social daftness. Maxim on the other hand, writes in a socially ADEPT way, with adeptness. Social daftness vs. social adeptness. Remember the book "The 7 Intelligences"? I thought there was something to that. Cryonics-- to succeed in the world-- is going to have to be piloted by people with increasingly higher complex levels of social adeptness. And this will be in evidence primarily in blogs, with the forums as a secondary source. Blogs are primary because they allow for true sovereign minded directional flow of ideas and indexing of ideas-- ie. more COHERENCY.

The people involved in cryonics who write a blog --- like me for instance-- are among the most socially adept and capable and honest thinkers-- in cryonics. Those who AVOID blogs-- and who OUGHT to be blogging-- and who therefore do NOT offer some transparency of their minds-- will become increasingly seen as "shady"-- with something to hide. Normally, in the past, it's been "tricky" to write a blog. But over the past few years it's become increasingly EASY. So-- the excuse that one has "no time" or "no inclination" to write a blog-- is an increasingly weak argument.

If one has power of any sort in the world-- then the medium of the blog-- becomes a point of reference-- if not for inside details of situation-- at least for outsider indicators of presence of mind. You can see this increasingly taking place as politicians, movie stars, big name journalists blog. Teenagers' blogs are fairly trite but the practise they gain will do them in good stead later in life.

So the question in my mind-- is-- who in cryonics is NOT blogging who OUGHT to be blogging? Corporate managers have power but it's not neccessary a good thing for them to blog under their own name-- then again-- an official corporate manager can blog in general terms to good effect. In the case of SA Inc., I was most interested in the "newsletter"-- however I'm now interested in seeing official corporate manager blogging with respect to SA Inc than a newsletter-- Saul Kent stopped publishing to CryoNet some time ago. Maybe it's time for Saul to say a few words in a blog-- so that the cryonics community as a whole can gain some insight into his intentions, plans and other aspects of cryonics that concern all of us.