| Blogs were supposed to change the world.
"In 1999, blogging became open to everyone," says Michael Keren, author of Blogosphere: The New Political Arena. "It seemed like a gigantic revolution. We often accuse the mainstream media of being exclusionary, and all of a sudden individuals were able to express their opinions for the whole world to listen."
Since 2003, Keren has been surfing the blogosphere, closely following a handful of blogs to determine what they say about society at the dawn of the 21st century. His chosen blogs ranged in geography and topicality, including a Iranian high school girl, blogging from under the veil; a baby boomer in a Quebecois log cabin; an African exile dealing with auto-emancipation; even an American soldier in Iraq, blogging from a warship. "Try to imagine a blogger during the Napoleonic Wars," says Keren. "Tolstoy wouldn’t have needed to write War and Peace! For the first time in history, a soldier in the battlefield can express his opinions, views and feelings for the world to read."
A lot of publicity surrounding the book focuses on Keren’s comparison between bloggers and terrorists. It’s not the most intuitive link, but Keren justifies his argument with the idea of "excess." "Obviously, bloggers are not terrorists," he says. "Terrorists can be bloggers, but bloggers are not necessarily terrorists. The two groups use very different methods, but bloggers believe that an excess of words is going to make everyone listen, just like terrorists who think that if they bomb enough cities, everyone will listen."
Keren quickly discovered that the reality of blogging was quite different. "One problem is that people feel like, finally, the world is going to read what they have to say – and no one reads it," he says. "There are a handful of celebrities who make it, and the rest of us are writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear." At one point in his study, someone wrote a blog post about the death of her cat and she was inundated with sympathetic responses. "But you never know how real those emotions are," Keren argues. "There is no real commitment, just an expression of emotions. You never know if the blog is written by a man, a woman, a group of web designers – and the next day those people can just disappear from the web. The blogosphere creates a community that is very much fake. I believe in personal contact between individuals, not between nicknames."
Near the end of his study, Keren decided to take the plunge and register his own blog. "It takes five seconds," he says. "You put in your nickname and just start. But since I’ve dealt with reading and writing all my life, I have this awe and wonder vis-à-vis the written word. I never write easily, and on a blog, I can’t take back what I’ve written because, in principle, it’s already been read by millions. I agonized over what should be the first sentence I write for the whole world to read, and by the time I was done thinking about it, I had forgotten my nickname and my blogging experience was over."
You can take a spin around the blogosphere with Keren on Friday, February 9 at 8:00 p.m., at McNally Robinson.
CBC’s Canada Reads hits Calgary this week, as three musicians – Kris Demeanor, Danielle French and Crystal Plamondon – descend on McNally Robinson to perform original songs about literature and chat about their flirtations with the literary. Once you’re jazzed up on their inspiring tunes, you can take the mic to tell the crowd how books have changed your life. It all happens on Thursday, February 8 at 7:00 p.m.
Canada’s master of historical fantasy, Guy Gavriel Kay, touches down in Cowtown to celebrate his latest novel, Ysabel. 15-year-old Ned Marriner accompanies his photographer father for a shoot in Provence and runs into the alluring teenage history geek, Kate Wenger. Before their awkward flirtations can take root, they’re confronted with impossible figures from ancient Celtic tribes and Roman legions, roaming the countryside on a mysterious mission. Chainmail meets iPods at the Knox United Church on Friday, February 9 at 6:30 p.m.
The country of Liberia, Africa, has been razed by a pair of civil wars in the past decade, making victims of thousands of families and children. Spoken word poet Wakefield Brewster joins local bands Nushi, Threads and Dragon Fli Empire, along with capoeira and hip hop dancers, for Bullets Not Beats: A Benefit Concert, to speak out against the horrors of armed conflict. All proceeds from the evening go to the Child Advocacy and Rehabilitation Center in Liberia, an organization that works to rehabilitate child soldiers. This all-ages show takes place on Saturday, February 10, doors at 6:30 p.m., in the Old MacEwan Hall Ballroom at the University of Calgary. There’s a minimum donation of $5 and you can get more information by e-mailing bhodzic@redcross.ca.
We’ve got a mystery author this week! Identified only as XXXXX XXXX, the author of Democracy Derailed: The Breakdown of Government Accountability in Alberta and How to Get it Back on Track is apparently a well-known political figure, raised in Alberta, who has a national reputation in public, social and health policy – but as I write this article, his/her identity has not yet been released. The book explores how Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government has manipulated public opinion and stifled dissent to maintain its iron-fisted control. You can discover the identity of this enigmatic wordsmith at two events this week; first, she/he will be signing the book on Saturday, February 10 at noon, at McNally Robinson; then, there’s a book launch on Monday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m., at Pages Books.
A treat for poetry fans: dennis cooley, the influential prairie poet and author of Bloody Jack, a long poem about a Manitoba outlaw, arrives in Calgary this week to read from his latest work of poetry, the bentleys. Inspired by Sinclair Ross’s classic prairie novel, As for Me and My House, cooley brings his typographic exuberance to bear on the Dirty ’30s. Join him at Pages Books on Tuesday, February 13 at 7:30 p.m.
Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and if you don’t have candlelit dinner plans with your sweetheart, you can dive into the Femme Fatale Carnivale. With fire-eating, a bachelor/bachelorette auction, drag kings and queens, magicians, circus performers, "Scary Bunny," Kabuki Guns Burlesque – and possibly even some poetry – it’ll be a scandalous evening of uninhibited mayhem. Proceeds from this second annual event go to the YWCA Safe Haven Program, and tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door.
Call 244-9100 for more information, or head down to Twisted Element on the evening of Wednesday, February 14. |
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