I’ve been blogging off-and-on since 2002, lately more off than on. Despite a few, “I’m back!” posts over the last few years, it’s become clear to me that I don’t really have a blog anymore. There’s some pretty damning evidence in support of that hypothesis:

In September 2009, I got married. Did you know that? Yeah, you probably did. But certainly not from reading this blog. No mention of it anywhere and definitely no photo galleries of the occasion.

Last summer, my wife (see above) and I discovered we were expecting a baby. I was shaving and she kicked me out of the bathroom, 90 seconds later we were jumping up and down in the hallway holding a little pink wand. Then I finished shaving. Again, you probably knew that already but you didn’t learn it here.

About seven weeks ago, my daughter Adela Beatrice was born. She’s incredible, adorable, and highly photogenic. You’d think that—maybe—I’d mention that somewhere. Even post a photo? Nope.

So yeah, I don’t think I really have a blog anymore. I mean, it’s not like I’m totally silent on the Internet, but there’s a balance or even synergy (sorry!) to be found between the micro- and macro-blogging. I’ll keep sniffing around the edges and, who knows, maybe have a blog again someday.

Though I had a weekly newsletter in college and eventually started putting them on my webpage (my friends asked me to tell them via email when the new newsletter was up—RSS feeds were still two years away) my first real blogging was done for a friend’s website, Beatchild.

Evidently, they let just anyone post on this website. For example, I have spent all of my witty comments for the day in other locations, yet this post is published with little to no concern for its quality. Perhaps this is a lesson we, as walking humanoid (rather than human) automatons can learn living in our post-authentic existence. Always make sure that what you have to say is worthwhile, because chances are good that you’re the only one listening. To bore another is disrespectful, to bore oneself is downright criminal.

I’m extremely proud that my first entry intro the blogosphere clearly shows that I am aware of my limited (I prefer the term “elite”) audience and equally limited writing skills. My karma was pointed in the right direction.

My second post followed two weeks later, a few days after my 25th birthday.

I’ve come to two simultaneous conclusions. First, that I am completely, utterly, and terribly alone. Everything from the goals that I reach for, the obstacles that hold me back, and the criteria I use to measure my progress are perceived by and pertain to me alone. Profound sadness and loneliness followed this realization. Second, I discovered that I am surrounded by people exactly like me. We all are completely, utterly, and terribly alone. We all feel as though no one can understand, if they even cared to try, our personal trials, triumphs, and tragedies. We are all sad and we are all lonely. This realization had not quite the opposite effect. Sadness and loneliness metamorphosed not into happiness and gregariousness, but a distant hope that–someday–we can all let these walls that separate us fall to the ground and get back to living together. I did not find this to be any less uplifting.

It caused several of my friends and family to pull me aside and ask me if I needed a hug. Some suggested counseling. I’m just marveling at how I managed to go from humble “make sure that what you have to say is worthwhile” to over-the-top emotional confessions in the span of two weeks. It’s what blogging does to you, I guess.

I mean, look at me, I’m blogging about myself blogging (about blogging). Maybe I do need counseling.

The Stanifesto is at 94 posts (including this one) and six days to go before the one-year anniversary. That means I’m still on pace to hit 100 before next Monday. It’s not like I’ve had nothing else going on, neither (Holy Triple-Negative, Batman!). Two all-day retreats for work, a few open houses for apartments, and my mother and step-father being here for two days could’ve spelled the end—but no!

You all are doing your part as well. We’re at 96 comments, so there are only four left before you beat me to 100. Special mention should go to Sarah, who’s had the most comments since the challenge began, and Brant, who not only linked to his own blog post about how love could be considered revolutionary (in response to “Totalitarian semiotics as pre-emptive censorship“) but then, possibly just to show me up, got married last weekend. Congratulations, Brant!

Overall, I’ve been very surprised I’ve been able to keep this going without resorting to terribly lame and/or tragically short posts. I think my writing has definitely gotten faster, if not quite better. Traffic to sunshocked.com has stayed pretty much the same, but two of my posts have gotten picked up by other blogs. I don’t exactly know the mechanics behind how either one happened and if my frequent updates served as a catalyst in either situation, but I’m pleased people who have no pre-existing inclination to care what I write here are receiving some value from it.

In other web news, today was a great day as I’ve managed to schedule my organization’s first ever “Web Retreat” for Friday, July 13th (ooh! the symbolism!) where my co-webmaster and I will be teaching a wide variety of topics, like Writing for the Web, Blogging 101, and My First HTML Document. Wish us luck!

This is post 94. Six more to go.

It’s workplanning season where I work and everyone is struggling to incorporate the organization’s anti-oppression and diversity initiatives into their priorities. On the one hand, I’m very lucky because I’ve got the web in my corner—clearly the biggest force for democracy since the printing press. On the other hand, thinking outside of the server-shaped box is sometimes difficult for the technically minded and there’s clearly a huge difference between the possibilities inherent to the medium and the capabilities of a small web team at a non-profit. What follows is not a list of the projects I’m pursuing over the next 12 months, but the principles that are guiding my brainstorming. Please feel free to suggest some actual projects (or challenge my anti-oppression analysis).

Oppression, as I’m using the term, is ideological domination resulting in exploitation of one social group for the benefit of another. Racism is a form of oppression based on ethnicity, valuing (at least in the United States) people of European descent over African, Native American, etc. Sexism is another based on gender and there are lots more. A common tendency is that these dominant ideologies tend to be both reinforced from a centralized source (mass media) and also internalized by oppressor and oppressed alike—to the point where (for example) a woman might believe that she could never be as good a lawyer as a man because she’s “too emotional”.

Now, some ideas on how the web can help.

Open the vectors. McKenzie Wark’s “A Hacker Manifesto” (have I mentioned I love manifestos?) well describes a Vectoralist Class which maintains its power largely by controlling access to information, not land or wealth. Considering the role that mass media plays in reaffirming oppressive narratives (e.g. all African American youth are in gangs), opening the vectors so that marginalized stories can be told is an immediate disruption. This process involves relinquishing editorial control and finding alternative methods of distribution, for instance community-generated feeds replacing hand-picked content or facilitating non-traditional authorship (i.e. stewarding content from an oppressed community to the mass media). It’s important to examine both the input and output, so the content that’s being produced (and valued) and the ways it’s being disseminated without being manipulated to conform to pre-existing standards.

Interrupt feedback loops. The coder in me might suggest that power and privilege seem (ironically?) to follow a Power Curve. A Power Curve, aka Zipf Law, aka the Pareto Principle is a relationship exhibited in lots of situations, but most often when previous performance affects future performance—called the Yule Process. Popular websites get linked to more often than non-popular websites, making them more popular. Books that sell well appear on lists or are talked about, making them sell better. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. On the web, it was pointed out long ago that there’s still a lot of area under the curve and the web lacks the necessity of focus that makes the it possible to dominate an entire field. Amazon.com isn’t limited by shelf space, it can offer a book that sells very few copies. A local movie theater has to show movies it knows will make money so it can pay rent; YouTube doesn’t. LonelyGirl15 or ZeFrank are stars without ever having begged Paramount to distribute them.

Challenge the story. Digging up dirt seems like what the internet does best. As our failing Fourth Estate sleeps on the job, citizen media and general muckrakers do their job for them. It’s not just journalism-type information that’s getting out into the public because of the internet. The amazing Maplight project (which just won NetSquared’s Innovation Award) connects corporations that give legislators money to how those legislators then vote on legislation supporting those corporations. Following the money and seeing how bought your Senator is has never been easier. Personally, I think this would be one of the biggest (and first) losses if network neutrality failed to be safeguarded.

Man, this was a hard one to write. Everyday posts are a bitch.

I’ve managed to write 86 posts so far since June 18th, the first of the Stanifesto. Some expert use of arithmetic will quickly reveal that the 18th is 14 days away and 86 is 14 shy of 100. You guessed it, I’m going to try and hit 100 before I hit 1. And that means blogging every day for the next two weeks.

Given that each Stanifesto post quite honestly takes a solid three hours including research, writing, editing, and making the thumbnails, that means that I’m promising 42 hours—almost two whole days—of work to you just to make the Stanifesto birthday party a memorable one.

How can you help? I’m glad you asked. First, the Stanifesto currently has only 83 comments. That’s less than one per post. Let’s see if we can break 100 on comments as well. Anytime you see a post without a comment in the next two weeks, jump in and share your two cents. Even if it’s to disagree with me or to suggest a more interesting topic (who knows, I might take your suggestion).

Blogging over the last year has changed me, but not in the way I had feared. I was worried about becoming one of those guys who never quite experiences life because he’s too busy thinking about how to capture it for others. I’ve mostly resisted that and instead used this blog as an opportunity to go deeper into experiences that I’ve had, to think about them more critically and challenge my initial reactions, and to explain them when possible to people who might not communicate with me regularly.

Though I started with the theme “Communication & Culture”, I quickly realized that this was really too broad to be useful, as it didn’t really limit me in any way, shape, or form. I mean, what doesn’t fall into one of those two categories? A quick look at my tag cloud suggests that the themes that keep coming up here are: activism, design, internet, language, and politics. I’m comfortable with that dynamic and, honestly, more accurate description of the Stanifesto.

This is post 87. 13 to go.

Recently my friends and family have pointed out that I don’t really talk on the phone. “Dialing can work both ways, you know,” they say. It’s true. I don’t call anyone. I rarely even pick up when someone calls. I note who’s calling and listen to their message later if they’ve left one. Why is this exactly?

It’s a poor medium. There is an expectation of immediate communication without the benefit of immediate feedback. In personal communication, body language plays a huge role in carrying the message—completely lacking on the telephone. Instant messaging has similar problems, it’s true, but with greater leniency afforded to response times to compensate. You can consider what’s been written and gather your thoughts. We’re only talking a few seconds (somewhat longer for text messaging) but it can make a huge difference.

When someone doesn’t respond immediately to what you’ve said on the telephone, the natural tendency is to assume you haven’t offered enough information or that they disagree. You prattle on trying to clarify. This behavior is precisely why the Cingular “Dropped Call” commercials are funny. Maybe one day everyone everywhere will grow an extra patience muscle… or maybe telephones are just bad that way. Too many of my conversations devolve into one person dominating the conversation (half of the time it’s me) or two people talking over one another or long periods of silence… like a Zen face-off.

So what do I like? I like time-shifted mediums a lot. That’s why I continue to check voicemail, even though I rarely call someone back. Once you drop the preconceived notion that cellphones are for instant voice communication, the idea of being able to send someone an “audio text message” of you talking sounds pretty useful. My not answering has turned some of my friends into sound artists, leaving fairly outstanding voicemails for me.

Email, text messaging, and instant messaging are all great. I rarely if ever let them go unanswered. But I’m no techno-elitist. Two summers ago, my girlfriend at the time was away for the summer at a mountain retreat. I absolutely hated talking to her on the phone (a combination of very poor sound quality and not being able to call her back and thus having to take her call each and every time wherever I was) so we wrote letters. I wrote at least one every week, without fail, sometimes accompanied by CDs or pictures of my cat doing ridiculous things. They averaged several pages long and the double digit range was not unheard of.

Of course, there’s always face-to-face communication as well. I live in San Francisco and, if you’re lucky enough to as well, you can talk to me face-to-face whenever. I’ll even buy you a drink. If your lucky level falls between living-in-San-Francisco and owning-a-Mac, I’ll video chat with you anytime. I normally use Adium (yay encryption!) but IM me and I’ll switch to iChat AV and you can find out if I’m wearing clothes or not. For those of you who neither live in SF nor own a Mac, not being able to talk with me is the least of your problems.

I started this post wanting to talk about Twitter and personal blogs—how the public aspect of them allows people to share things about their life with people they wouldn’t normally otherwise stay in touch with (for instance, a number of the readers of this very blog are college friends or other folk that I don’t exactly talk with everyday). When I ask people why they don’t Twitter or have a blog they look at me the exact same way as when I tell them I’m thinking about officially ditching the telephone. People should use the technology that works for them, by all means, but consider this very blog post a warning to anyone who wants to stay in touch with me: I stay in touch better with people who Twitter. It’s just a fact, sorry. Go there now. Friend me. If you don’t like it, leave. There’s no 2-year contract with T-Mobile or anything.

I’ve probably never liked the telephone. I remember a certain titillation in talking with girls in high school, but I’m guessing that was substantially more about the “talking to girls” factor than the specific technology. I can recall a similar fondness for cleverly folded notes, which would again support my “talking to girls” hypothesis.

Mom, we’ll still talk on Sundays.

As such, I’ve missed being a part of the ubiquitous post-SXSW blogging feeding frenzy that happens every year. By now all of the good bits are gone. Those more articulate than I have already dissected Bruce Sterling’s Greenspan-esque deflation of 2.0′s collective egos, noted the increased stratification of “celebrity” that vlogging has offered, and marveled at how Twitter has ushered in the beginning of a new medium or the death of all that is good about human relationships (depending who you ask).

All that’s left to blog about is how crazy sick I am.

I would classify the disease I’ve managed to come down with as half influenza and half streptococcus. Whether strepfluenza or influcoccus formally, it’s called “the Stroo” by common folk. Me, anyway. The Stroo has three exciting parts: a wicked cough, a throbbing headache, and fevered delusions.

It’s cough is nasty enough that the slightest lung tickle instantly fills me with dread. I search for a means of escape. When it finally arrives, it’s as if the Devil’s own trident has been jammed into my weakened solar plexus. I cry out. The pain rings like a church bell across a foggy meadow. Field mice look up, then scurry their children into their holes before the rain comes.

It is not enough to say that the headache throbs. Of course it throbs, all headaches feel like the throb. Yet just this morning I looked at myself, bleary-eyed and utterly destroyed, in the mirror and could see it throb. My head was growing bigger, then smaller. Like the waxing and waning moon, it seemed. Indeed, all five senses were accounted for. Not only did it feel and look like it was throbbing. It sounded, smelled, and tasted the same.

Finally, no stranger to strange dreams, the Stroo has taken my twisted id to a new level. So far I have dreamt that my cat was suing me, my officemate was bit by a vampire, and that I dropped a #2 in the middle of my bed. These dreams are not flat sketches, my fever develops them into full delusions with just enough reality to keep me worried they might be real. I was sitting at the defendant’s table with my counsel, looking my cat in her eyes as she testified from the witness stand, thinking, “How could she do this? She knows it was an accident. I’d never hurt her on purpose.” Next, before my co-worker developed full-blown vampirism, talk turned to whether our HSA would cover prevention therapy, if such therapy existed, or whether firing someone for being a vampire violated our diversity and anti-oppression policy. Finally, I lay in my bed in horror for literally hours for fear the my third dream had actually transpired—unsure how (or if!) I wanted to confirm it hadn’t.

Four different people have now all apologized for giving me whatever they had. I politely joked that I was sure I picked it up from some stranger in a crowded bar, defenses lowered by rain and free wine. Now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to believe that each and every one of them gave me whatever they had and all of the diseases combined like the Constructicons into one massive, and probably evil, illness.

Maybe this issue hasn’t quite hit mainstream news yet, but almost every blog I read is weighing in and I’ll be damned if I don’t use my position of privilege (by which I mean “a Mac user”) to contribute on the subject as well.

The most recent uproar began when Mike Monteiro called out Carson Workshops for it’s ovewhlemingly white list of presenters. Jason Kottke poured gasoline on the fire, presenting gender percentages of various web conferences.

A backlash began from the event organizers. Eric Meyer heroically blamed the system, saying “Call that decision a manifestation of old-boy clubbiness if you want, but it isn’t.” He cites the research they did about who would attend an event with X, Y, Z speakers… lo and behold, the “A-List” was mostly men.

Trying to cite Micki Krimmel in this whole affair gives me a “circular reference” error, because back to back posts from Mickipedia praise Monteiro and critique the recent rise of the word “poser” in tech circles. Violet Blue recently got called one, Leah Culver has come out in favor of the word, and Leah and Micki both shared spots on Violet’s Sexiest Geeks of 2006 list.

I bring up the poser discussion to illustrate the vastly different understandings of what an “expert” in this industry might be. Eric Meyer knows more about floating divs than I may ever, but his site is not nearly as nice looking as Becca Wei‘s, a top designer of WordPress themes (currently, two of the five “featured” themes are hers). Is he an expert because of the books he’s had published? Because of the panels he’s spoken on? How much of his success under these criteria are tied to his race, sexuality, or gender?

Before I jump in and tear anyone claiming that 0% of presenters at a conference being women is justified a new vagina (my first instinct), I should make sure my own house is in order. Of the blogs in my feedreader with single authors (so not Boing Boing, for instance), 41% are female. Yay, me. I am not a pig.

However, a closer look reveals most of the female blogs I subscribe to are people I know, not “experts” (though exceptionally talented writers, artists, designers, and otherwise crafty people). I really have as far to go as everyone else.

This is really what it comes down to: who do we, as a community, hold up as our experts? Who’s contributions do we say have value? While it’s easy to say, “don’t blame me for saying so, but this is the way the world works”, I can only say, “don’t blame me for saying so, but that puts you squarely in part-of-the-problem and not part-of-the-solution“. How should the world work, and what can you/I/we do with the power we’re afforded as white, heterosexual males to make it that way?

Disclaimer: I bear Eric no ill-will; these are really tough, personal, and often emotionally-charged issues. His follow-up post acknowledges as much.

I’m not lying or even embellishing. Feel free to check out Time Magazine’s official site and see for yourself.

They cite many of my achievements over the last year. As Americans grew weary of the overproduced drivel on television they increasingly turned to sites like YouTube for entertainment and I was there with my videos from Japan. As Americans sought connection they looked for long lost friends and family on sites like MySpace and I was there, smiling back at them. As Americans rejected corporate news they turned to alternative sources, like blogs, and I was there with the Stanifesto. I haven’t even mentioned the events I’ve added to Upcoming or the links I’ve added to Del.icio.us, but I think you get the idea.

I know what you’re thinking. I wasn’t even aware that Stan was a candidate! I know, right? Honestly, I was a little surprised myself… mostly because, if I qualify for these sorts of contests, why haven’t I won any before?

This year, George Clooney was named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for a second time. That’s right, he was chosen back in 1997 as well. Granted, People does have a blog where you can nominate men you know personally (how very 2.0 of them), but are our celebrity stocks so depleted we have to double-dip in the man candy already? That’s like nominating someone with the last name of “Bush” or “Clinton” for president ever again—kind of a big “F-U” to the other 300 million or so Americans who haven’t been tapped yet. Like me.

It’s the same thing with that other big contest, the Nobel Peace Prize. They really need to take Time’s lead and honor me with a golden dove or stick of dynamite or whatever you get when you win. I’m especially qualified as well. Take a look at the list of past winners. I’ve ordered substantially fewer people killed than either Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat.

I’ll be submitting my demo reel for Oscar consideration as soon as I have some time to burn a DVD.

1. Numbers are tangible. The primitive brain that you pretend to have evolved beyond still affects a lot of your decision-making. Marketers know this and exploit it. There is an animalistic comfort in the easiness of lists; they suggest objects to be picked up, grasped, and easily compared. Whether it’s horsepower and miles per gallon or gigahertz and megabytes, one number is obviously higher or lower than another. We can rest assured that no one is out to fool us with complex arguments, because the values of the numbers are irrefutable.
2. There is an expectation of legitimate content. With so many posts that are merely ramblings on about one’s day, how work is going, or particular political preferences, there is a suggestion that a list of specific items contains information worth arranging. A headline like “Anarchism is Awesome” could be emotional reactions from a 13-year old reading Emma Goldman for the first time is, but “7 Awesome Moments in Anarchism” presents an expectation that anarchism may actually be talked about in discrete and concrete ways.
3. Scannability. Unlike books that require “reading”, an archaic and inefficient tradition still practiced by some Luddites and most of the Midwest, on the internet we scan pages by moving our eyes very quickly near the words. All kidding aside, it’s true that we really don’t read on the web, our eye-pattern tends to look like a capital “F”. We jump from item to item, treating paragraphs as lists of ideas, not a slowly unfolding argument. In this way, lists align with our natural tendency, a recipe for success.
4. Lists are easy to remember. Moses knew this when he started calling the rules God unloaded unto him the “Ten Commandments”. His contemporary Buddha did the same, whittling life down to Four Noble Truths, an Eightfold Path, etc. Both did so in order for their followers to remember the teachings without having a Treo handy. The number of items in a list present a target of things to remember (how many food groups?) and can remind you of what you’re missing. No one gives up after 7 reindeer, because they’re obviously forgetting Blitzen. Bonus points if your list can be converted to an acronym, like HOMES for the Great Lakes or ABMNNNNNOPQSY for the Canadian Provinces and Territories.
5. What’s number five going to be? Will it be what you longingly hope or what you secretly dread? Lists are dramatic by nature. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end—just like a story. Your brain magically, and mostly subconsciously, transforms the slowly marching items into exposition, rising action, climax, and denouement. As you read through the 13 horror movies, your brain is thinking, “Will ‘Jacob’s Ladder‘ be on it?” or, perusing the 10 best Mac apps, you desperately wish to resolve the question, “Has this guy heard of Quicksilver?” By the end of the list, you are rewarded. Countdowns in particular leverage this effect.

Now you see that there’s a perfectly reasonable and largely neurological reason that you like clicking on articles with titles like “the top 10 blankity-blanks” or “7 secrets about blankity-blank”. Don’t beat yourself up about it.