Newcomers to this blog perhaps wonder at the 'webactivism' url. I happily admit that this blog originated as an eager-beaver change the world by -er- writing about it critically. Realising that anyone who can reach these media don't need 'our' help (yes, us, the innefectual back in school at 30+ gang), whatever help a smarmy blog could provide anyway.

Only when the last self-righteous slogan t-shirt has been sold to pay our hosting costs will we realise that 'they' cannot eat blogs.

Now, I just talk shit because at that I cannot fail.

Anyway, try to ignore the cowardly self-effacement; good point or not (and c'mon people if the failure of academic discourse to change anything in [insert violent region here] didn't convince you that a good point is useless in the real world, then surely Bush's evasive, obviously false but entirely sucessful non-point rhetoric must have), and enjoy someone saying in pretty plain english something I very much agree with: [-empyre-] Self-programmable media activism; just cheap talk?

Some excerpts:

Blogs facilitate a profusion of individual and unique voices in virtual space, while at the same time put marginal value on the creation of dynamic and active social networks that operate in political space

Self-programmed media creates the illusion that the individual is the center of the universe- while other-programmed media reinforces the notion that an individual is a somehow a member of a larger society.

Smart mobs seemed promising, but all to often nobody knows how to do anything in public together other than stand around proud of their able to use technology in a cool way. How has digital technology hindered, rather than aided, our ability to connect to one another in deep, profound, creative and effective ways?

By accepting self-programmable technologies as the resource of choice for activist and artist practice, how much have we lost by not using tools from and with tangible connections to the 'real'?

Ultimately I am not a Luddite, just an active skeptic.