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I think that one of the things that has slowed me from blogging more is the inherent difference in textual guide-posts between paper and e-paper. Words in books, on street signs signs, across a television, etc., inhabit distinct milieus, each with their own rules for being interpreted. The milieu in which words interact on the web is still in development. It is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it opens the possibility of complete creative control. On the other, it strips the reader of clues as to how to interpret what is being read. Where a word is is as important to understanding its significance as what it signifies. “Stop” can mean a lot of things, but if its on a red octagonal piece of metal, you know that it is your car that you are supposed to stop. That is language in its most simple and direct form. A traffic sign is about as pure a denotative sign as your ever going to get in life. It means what it is. In a story, say, in a book, the writer doesn’t need such directness. He or she has as many pages as necessary to convey a thought. Word strings may be built in such ways that the connotation of each word plays off the others to develop complex thought, even emotion. In this way, the yellow wallpaper in Charlotte Gilman’s much-analyzed short story becomes a powerful symbol of emotional distress. An “author” has time…

Are you still reading this? If so, you probably run against the main of internet “readers.” Most of us simply do not read that deeply into text “printed” on the internet. I sure don’t. I read what I think I need to and rip through the rest. Especially if it is written out in the traditional block form that we expect in a textbook or novel. The rapidity at which the web delivers information has created in the “reader” an expectation of knowledge-gathering while at the same time devaluing the mental work that it takes to assimilate that knowledge. I honestly couldn’t give you a synopsis of the article that I read ten minutes ago on Wikipedia. Nor would I want to, because the reader’s expectation of rapid information has allowed for information-sources that give no emphasis to valid information. And the cycle continues. The hermenuetics of the web is a mess. Image-words (certainly not “words” as commonly understood) by which information on the internet is conveyed are of a different synthetic vocabulary than what is used in other media. It seems to me that the Web is somewhere in between a street sign and the printed page. Readers expect brevity, but also want connotation; they want stop-signs that emote. In fact, considering the many and varied functions that this relatively new medium already serves (in any given day, we use it to work, play, communicate, shop, etcetera…), we need a communication system that compacts large amounts of denotative information into single signifiers while at the same time allowing the reader to understand the situation, the texture, of what is being said; Stop signs that bleed–and not necessarily mean stop, depending on circumstance and where they are found.

Denotative signs work quite well for data conveyence and commerce, but in terms of the “social network” that the internet aspires to be (and, perhaps unwittingly, has always been), they fall flatly short. The top of human sentiment that you are likely to achieve on the internet is posting comedic and/or gothic and/or sexy pictures of you and/or your friend skateboarding and/or “kickin’ it” while blasting out your currently favorite rock and/or hip-hop anthem on your myspace account. OMG!! LMAO!!

And that’s the problem. Did you read “OMG!! LMAO!!” the way it lays out literally, or did you follow the textual pattern that I was trying to develop? I’m sure that you did and its my fault if you didn’t, but the point is made; there is no way of knowing whether or not the connotation of what is written will be received. We have enough problems figuring out that shit with the old way of doing things, pen and paper, and now we have this completely new and everchanging medium to wrangle with. Depending on your mood, where you are, and how your browser translates this page, you may think that I wrote something dick when I was being nice, or something nice when I was being a dick. There is a long way yet to go between functional internet language and a truly new set of social expression.

I guess I could have made all of this a lot quicker by asking you this; think of your favorite book.

Have you ever seen a website that affected you as powerfully? That enraptured you and made you breathless for resolution?

Probably not; the textual guide-posts do not exist for such intuitive reading that by-passes the denotative and structural nature of internet communication. There are a lot of sites that awe me with what they do, but Oliver Twist knocked me to my knees. It did not need a function beyond what a young boy saw in the series of connotations that it delivered.

With its media capability, the web has the ability to achieve Art beyond what the printed page has done. It just needs to develop a functioning lexicon beyond base communication and spectacle. The cool thing is that the process is not only inevitable, it is one in which we are currently participating. So let’s peel that onion. I’ll supply some signifiers, and you tell me what they mean:

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Love Is All You Need

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