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The Death of the Cyberflâneur

nytimes.com

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Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#61

Post by forgottenpass »

jack_rabbit wrote: post #54
kazinator wrote: post #41

> While not deliberately concealing his identity, the flâneur preferred to stroll incognito. ... > However, anyone entertaining such dreams of the Internet as a refuge for the bohemian, the hedonistic and the idiosyncratic probably didn’t know the reasons behind the disappearance of the original flâneur. If the flâneur is operating incognito ... how the hell can you be sure he is actually gone? Maybe he just upped hi…

Hackernews is itself one of these arcades that have supposedly disappeared. We're the flâneurs.

We're the flâneurs.

I thought about reddit and subreddits while reading this article (and HN is just an off-brand subreddit), and I can't disagree more.

These kind of websites are funnels that can satiate someone's need for novelty, while exposing them primarily to pages and ideas that a sub-community assembled around and collectively agree upon. The exploration hits a hard wall of very diminished returns once the explorer meets the sub-culture and the ideas they like.

In many ways, the links in my Facebook timeline are a better vector for exposure to new things because my IRL friends and relations are a wider variety of people than congregate in a subreddit (or other specific social forum).

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#62

Post by cobber2005 »

IsaacL wrote: post #12
alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

Here's a collection of jumping-off points to curious communities I've spent many a happy hour exploring: http://ribbonfarm.com https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/ http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ https://meaningness.com/ http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ Enjoy :)

Principia Cybernetica introduced me to pantheism (not really a theism at all). It is wonderful that the internet still allows people to stumble upon things that can positively change their life, even if it is hard to find those things. It was probably harder to find such things before the internet.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#63

Post by okwhatthe2 »

ernestosoo wrote: post #52
kazinator wrote: post #41

> While not deliberately concealing his identity, the flâneur preferred to stroll incognito. ... > However, anyone entertaining such dreams of the Internet as a refuge for the bohemian, the hedonistic and the idiosyncratic probably didn’t know the reasons behind the disappearance of the original flâneur. If the flâneur is operating incognito ... how the hell can you be sure he is actually gone? Maybe he just upped hi…

You are missing the main point, man. I am sure you never experience the internet in the 1990's or early 2000's. You must live in a very parochial place! You don't know anything about arts, films, music. This website is one example. I like this website because there is something that is "HIS". He owns his individuality. http://www.novaexpresscafe.com/main.html It is not just about information. It is about aesthetics!…

This is really good parody.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#64

Post by jack_rabbit »

forgottenpass wrote: post #61
jack_rabbit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackernews is itself one of these arcades that have supposedly disappeared. We're the flâneurs.

We're the flâneurs. I thought about reddit and subreddits while reading this article (and HN is just an off-brand subreddit), and I can't disagree more. These kind of websites are funnels that can satiate someone's need for novelty, while exposing them primarily to pages and ideas that a sub-community assembled around and collectively agree upon. The exploration hits a hard wall of very diminished returns once the ex…

I see your point.

(from the article) "... the whole point of the flâneur’s wanderings is that he does not know what he cares about."

There is definitely a theme to the articles that show up here. However, I've been visiting this site for a fairly long time and still find it a good starting point for discovering new sites and information I haven't seen before. It is still rather like browsing the windows of shops.

Maybe reading HN alone doesn't make a flâneur, but I don't really see the variety of it as being a problem. Old web rings used to have topics or themes in the same way. Even so, HN is not the only site I browse in this way and I assume the same is true of most of the people here. As it is with this site, the others provide convenient jumping-off places for exploring, even if the kind of content that shows up has a loose theme to it.

Does that collectively build a very similar experience? I think it does. The format is a bit different, but the effect is the same.

Maybe the trouble is that places like HN have a less exploratory feel than browsing used to? Now you have a decent idea of what you're going to be seeing when you click a link. A web ring's "Next" button might have a more exciting or adventurous feel to it, but people used to use BBSes for the same thing as we now use HN and others.

Maybe its that the kind of links that flood the web today are seemingly mostly to websites operated by businesses? Personal webpages seem few and far-between now, and that gives the web a different feel. People still "surf" or explore what's out there like they have in the past, though.

It seems that the thrust of the article is that more people are doing things like never leaving Facebook when on the web. They get their content embedded in a Facebook frame. This is true. People like my mother are on Facebook and are likely not going to be doing any flâneuring. But this is different from saying that nobody does anything other than that.

In fact, I'd bet there are more people than ever doing actual surfing. They just make up a smaller percentage of the overall web user population than they used to because so many people are now on the web.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#65

Post by zem »

alva wrote: post #3

The joys of the world wild west are still out there for curious surfers. Admittedly it does require a lot more effort, especially for a younger generation who may not remember what the early web is like and how you would traverse it. I still get a thrill finding 'hidden' communities on the internet.

i feel like a lot of the freewheeling gibsonian stuff is happening on tumblr - it provides a relatively easy way to push content to the internet without overly constraining the form of that content.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#66

Post by monknomo »

pyre wrote: post #34
monknomo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep forum links on weird topics is my goto, but IRC may be something I should get back into. I kinda miss the web being made of forums, I feel like that's a tradition that's less healthy than it was. Facebook groups or slack channel or Stack Exchange just don't do it for me the same way

> Deep forum links on weird topics is my goto What about this? http://miketysontattoos.blogspot.ca/2011/06/quotient-rule-di... Not quite a forum link, but I really couldn't figure out what the purpose of that site was. Some sort of spam/seo seeding operation? Where does the source material come from.

That is crazy stuff. Weird as a numbers station

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#67

Post by philippoi »

The point Morozov didn't make explicit that would have helped his argument: the internet is turning into a perfect Panopticon, a total environment of confinement for control and subjectification as highlighted by Foucault. I first read that for architectural theory in college, and now it only seems to get increasingly vital to understanding everyday culture and identity. When the idea of the web as a terrain for the flâneur to be the main focus, the rival and dominating idea of the web as a terrain of control via total surveillance clarifies which direction the mainstream skews. Sure there are outliers, but emphasizing that to dismiss the wave in the direction of the Digital Panopticon is to miss Morozov's point.

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#68

Post by npiazza83 »

ernestosoo wrote: post #52
kazinator wrote: post #41

> While not deliberately concealing his identity, the flâneur preferred to stroll incognito. ... > However, anyone entertaining such dreams of the Internet as a refuge for the bohemian, the hedonistic and the idiosyncratic probably didn’t know the reasons behind the disappearance of the original flâneur. If the flâneur is operating incognito ... how the hell can you be sure he is actually gone? Maybe he just upped hi…

You are missing the main point, man. I am sure you never experience the internet in the 1990's or early 2000's. You must live in a very parochial place! You don't know anything about arts, films, music. This website is one example. I like this website because there is something that is "HIS". He owns his individuality. http://www.novaexpresscafe.com/main.html It is not just about information. It is about aesthetics!…

I had a wonderful nostalgia trip when a friend shared this yesterday: http://www.ouverture-facile.com/start/

THIS is what the web USED to be...

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#69

Post by ernestosoo »

kazinator wrote: post #58
ernestosoo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the main point, man. I am sure you never experience the internet in the 1990's or early 2000's. You must live in a very parochial place! You don't know anything about arts, films, music. This website is one example. I like this website because there is something that is "HIS". He owns his individuality. http://www.novaexpresscafe.com/main.html It is not just about information. It is about aesthetics!…

> I am sure you never experience the internet in the 1990's That sort of guessing tends not to pan out very well around here. I used Mosaic under XWindow in 1993.

That is pretty cool. Do you have any websites that make you feel nostalgic for the past? Any interesting websites in 1990's and early 2000's as well?

Re: The Death of the Cyberflâneur

#70

Post by kazinator »

ernestosoo wrote: post #69
kazinator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am sure you never experience the internet in the 1990's That sort of guessing tends not to pan out very well around here. I used Mosaic under XWindow in 1993.

That is pretty cool. Do you have any websites that make you feel nostalgic for the past? Any interesting websites in 1990's and early 2000's as well?

I'm user #1483 on Slashdot. That still exists, and I hardly ever go there though. Before the Slashdot era, I don't remember having visited some particular site regularly to see updating content.

But, oh, I got one: http://suck.com. That stopped making new content in 2001, but existed for another 14 years. Now the domain seems to have been taken over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com

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