Posted 2 years, 8 months ago in the early evening by oso
I said I would only post this month about Global Voices and my Reporting Across Cultures class. Here’s to that little practiced art (by me anyway) of keeping one’s word.
Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a feature piece on Literary Darwinism. Most of the article dealt with how a small group of academics are using evolutionary principles to interpret literary works. (ie. Hamlet tells the story of a dilema between personal self-interest and genetic perpetuation) But the article also takes a stab at explaining why literature exists at all. In biologist’s jargon, what’s the selective advantage of sharing stories? After all: “At first glance, reading is a waste of time, turning us all into versions of Don Quixote, too befuddled by our imaginations to tell windmills from giants. We would be better off spending the time mating or farming.” It’s a salient question: why would anyone in their right mind spend the day with their nose in a book when we could be mating? Besides my own experience that an interesting book is much easier to pick up than an interesting mating partner, the article offers some explanations of its own:
- literature is a defense reaction to the expansion of our mental life that took place as we began to acquire the basics of higher intelligence around 40,000 years ago
- reading literature is a form of fitness training, an exercise in “what if” thinking. If you could imagine the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans, then if you ever found yourself in a street fight, you would have a better chance of winning
- A third theory sees writing as a sex-display trait. Certainly writers often seem to be preening when they write, with an eye toward attracting a desirable mate.
- literature began as religion or wish fulfillment: we ensure our success in the next hunt by recounting the triumph of the last one
- it may be precisely writing’s uselessness that makes it attractive to the opposite sex; it could be that, like the male peacock’s exuberant tail, literature’s very unnecessariness speaks to the underlying good health of its practitioner. He or she has resources to burn
- another theory is that the main function of literature is to integrate us all into one culture; evolutionary psychologists believe shared imaginings or myths produce social cohesion, which in turn confers a survival advantage.
All of these theories seem equally applicable to explaining why we are compelled to blog. But, transnationalist and heart bleeder I am, it is the last theory that interests me the most. The idea that the main function of literature is to cohabit our space more peacefully by helping situate our readers into our own shoes. By letting them see the world in the way that we do.
A sufficient amount of idealism has remained into my mid-twenties that I still hold strongly to the belief that the more we talk, the less we will fight. Not only that, but the more we are forced to explain ourselves, the more we will be confronted with our own hypocrisies and understand others’ biases.
It is for this reason that I invest so much time into Global Voices. Because I really believe that its singular mission of just getting people from all over the planet to start talking to each other makes it the most important project out there. More so than anything going on at DARPA or NASA. More so than anything being funded millions of dollars by dozens of government agencies.
I’m actually naive enough to believe that if we all just started talking to each other that the trillion dollars we spend on “defense” could be spent on things like … you know, food, medicine, housing, and condoms. Definitely condoms. Because I cannot for the life of me understand why a single condom here costs as much as two dinners in India. Even if I was able to get laid, I couldn’t afford it.
I’ll get into more specific issues we’ve come across on Global Voices soon like language and how/if we should use the category “diaspora.”
But here’s my question for now: how can we do better? What are your first impressions of the website? If you read Global Voices consistently, what parts do you like about it? What bothers you? If it were up to you, what would you do differently? In all sincerity (not a word I often use) I’m really curious to hear from as many people as are willing to comment. Gracias.
As a contributor and “author” with GVO, I find myself struggling with what blogs to cover on a weekly basis. It does bother me that the majority of entries included in my weekly roundup are mainly in English written by Bolivians living outside of the country. Those who live in Bolivia and write in Spanish rarely write about country-specific topics. That’s the wonderful part about blogging, there are no rules about the content and subject that she/he wants to. But as a result, those blogs don’t fit into the purpose of the project. But I am optimistic and pleased to see how much the Bolivian Blogosphere has grown over the past 6 months. Hopefully it will continue on this upward trend.
As a reader of GVO, I am overwhelmed by the volume of content. I take for granted that I feel fairly knowledgeable about Latin American issues and references, but am so woefully ignorant about people, places and things in Asia in particular. But I take solace in that there are even more people in the country who are even less informed than I am.
I also see the scarcity of comments or feedback as a question whether people are actually using this information. It’s hard to tell whether the roundups are of any use to anyone.
i have been unable to see the big picture of what the future will look like in regards to the project. For example, someone must be able to *do* something with all of this information out there. I’d like to think that we aren’t blogging for the entertainment value, that the world will be better in some concrete way as a result. I still haven’t figure out how, but I’m willing to make the effort to try to figure that out.
I’ve begun to read Global Voices and one of the things that I love about it is in fact those round ups that Eddie refers to. I think they’re important, and I think depending on the author it brings up what they’re interested or what the GV reader should be aware of. I agree with you, Os, that GV is important, extremely important and I’m fucking happy to see you stand behind it.
In fact, the freelance gig I’m working on with a friend of mine, a U.T. design graduate student, is very similar to Global Voices. His project is more art based but carry a lot of the same purposes as GV. When he told about his project, I mentioned Global Voices and we sat down this past weekend and I walked him through it. “Shit, this is awesome,” he said. Indeed it is.
So, in order for more bloggers and online readers to visit GV, you need word of mouth, more advertising and definately, fantastic, incisive writing.
As far as the design would go. I will be honest and say that the interface is A LOT. It’s too busy! It needs to be organized in a heirarchical fashion where the reader doesn’t get a headache. The links and the navigation and the way things are set up must all be intuitive. This will definately attract more readers.
I got soo much to say about that NY Times piece, but I’ll save it for some other time…I’ve gone over my comment max.
Que paso, Oso? Have been remiss in reading your blog, it will take me a long time to catch up. But thanks for introducing me to News Univerity– I will definitely take advantage of that. They ought to link you as a model writer.
Today was my first visit to Global Voices and I must say it will NOT be my last. I’m sort of mad that I had not gone to that site sooner, but oh well. I agree with EMC it is a bit busy, but I guess the content makes up for it.
Good luck getting laid
Oso, como estas? Thank you for posting this. It is a good read. I’m not familiar with Global Voices but will check them out. I’m certain I will be hooked. I agree with you that we need to create more dialogue with people. Become better communicators and find creative solutions to all the chaos out in the world. In my neighborhood no one speaks to each other. Everyone in this city lives in their gated community…
Eddie,
I’m there struggling with you. I feel like a general pattern on GV as it matures is that the regional editors and contributors are starting to lighten up. As in linking to more stories that aren’t about politics and news. I’ve tried to start linking to interesting blogs like Cooking Diva and Zona Indie more often.
I dunno if I agree with that. As far as I understand it, the “purpose of the project” is to “diversify the conversation taking place online by involving speakers from around the world.” I think that certainly allows for all sorts of posts to be included in the roundups, even venting about boyfriends and girlfriends … there’s a topic the whole world can relate to.
It’s your comment about comments though that really resonates with me the most. There’s nothing more frustrating than pouring your heart out on a post and then not hearing a single thing, good or bad about it. I feel like GV’s greatest potential is getting people from all over the world to start interacting with each other, but it’s not happening yet. On the other hand, we are constantly sending people away, constantly saying, go visit this person, go read that person so it would make sense if the conversation is more decentralized and not on Global Voices.
EMC,
Being overwhelmed by content and an overly busy interface is something I hear often. I think we need to work on it. I’ve always been very impressed with how much information Corante is able to pack in to such a neat looking and intuitive space. I hope to hear more your freelance gig and your thoughts on the whole literary darwinism thing.
Patti,
Thank you. We have to write a story for our class … I’ve got a few ideas and I think I’m gonna try to get it published in one of our weeklies here in SD. If it gets rejected, I’ll post it on here. Huge congrats for your work on the Chronicle - I’m impressed though not surprised.
Julissa and Mariposa,
Glad to hear you’ll be swinging by GV. Please feel free to comment on anything that interests you.
I think that GV is an awesome project. I am especially impressed with the time and effort that you guys put in to find all these “voices” out there. Cesar makes a good point with the visual appeal of the site…for a newbie to the site it may be a bit overwhelming but I really don’t see another way around the current method. Finally, keep on with the good work.
You’re having problems getting laid? What happened to the 24 hour erection you had going bro’?
I think keeping one’s nose in a book instead of mating is a much better way to save money on condoms and avoid pesky pregnancy scares. However, I thought of another reason for literature that didn’t seem to be mentioned up there. Coming from a sociology point of view, it’s simple. Literature — and this can be seen most clearly with children’s parables — helps to teach us society’s values. So maybe writing isn’t about trying to pick up for some people, but rather just trying to inculcate values.
I read Global Voices about once a week. I’m only subscribed to the Latin America and Caribbean feed. The best thing about is that from what I see when I go to the site and not just read the RSS feed is that the GV team has the globe covered. It’s easy to find information from different parts of the world. I also like the feature photos from the Flickr feeds.
Honestly, though. It’s usually too much information for me to go through and I only read one or two posts a week. And I know condensing the information is part of what is great about GV, but it’s still hard for me to go get to it all.
Interesting thoughts on writing. Personally I subscribe to the two types of people view - writers and non writers. Many people enjoy to write, the types that have had a diary since age 6. I am most definitely in the second group. I enjoy to read, but find writing painful. I jot down notes, rather than any actual writing. Even with extra time during traveling my notepad consists only of scribbled people, places, and events. Maybe I’m just too ADD.
So why do I bother to occasionally blog? Well, my site is a bit of a never ending letter for friends or family far away. I also see it as a watered down historical repository. More than a few times I have found myself searching my own site to find something I stumbled on years ago - though my photos seem to be of much greater interest to the rest of the world than my ramblings.
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Global Voices is a great site; it really is a wealth of knowledge. So why am I not there every day? Time. I’m afraid GV fights it out with fifty other RSS feeds every day. Often it looses because I don’t have to time to fully commit. The detailed coverage, while a great thing, requires a significant investment of time to keep up. Perhaps it is also lower in rankings because I am a bit politics weary?
One thing to note about my experience is that I tend to do the main part of the site, which is a bit like drinking from a fire hose. I imagine a significant portion of your readers would be able to narrow their interests to a specific country. For me, I think being able to narrow the feeds down to specific interests would be better. For example, technology, customs, food, etc. Who knows though.. That is probably just adding more fuel to the information fire.
Having the chance to read about someone’s point of view from the opposite side of the fence was unthinkable 20 years ago, and it’s wonderful that we’re able to do so with the click of a mouse. No hidden agendas, just straightfoward communication with a minimum of intermediaries (just the translator in some cases).
Why literature? A teacher in grade school once told me that non fiction’s purpose was to teach us about facts, famous people and history, but by putting us in other people’s shoes, literature would teach us about life.
[...] That means two things to me. First, how fucking cool? I could, if I had anything more to say to Twisire, write a time-capsule-like letter to a two-year-old living in rural Malawi. Second, that these posts we write are much more meaningful and powerful than we realize when we write them (while we are full of boredom, sadness, anger, or caffeine). It has struck me recently that this blog is much more public than I had ever realized before. I’ve always imagined writing these posts to the 20 or so bloggers who occasionally comment as well as your odd visitor from Belarus, stumbling through a maze of hypertextual noise. But lately, I go to parties and I am introduced to people who already know me. Or offline friends who I never would have guessed stop by to read these silly cerebral fits, look knowingly when I mention something that I’ve already written on here. It’s all left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Like I am speaking very loudly in a crowded, but quiet library. Which isn’t like me at all. Chris wrote that there are two types of people: those who read and those who write. It seems to me that the former are in the majority. But the irony is that in real life I am the listener and not the talker. So much so that my good friends tell me to stop interviewing them and to stop avoiding all conversation about myself. [...]