One of the areas I've been particularly interested in when thinking about Forteana 2.0, is the idea that the Internet is haunted, and that the clients we use, our browsers, IM softwares, IRC clients etc., might be thought of as crystal balls, or Ouija boards.
It's the sense of the 'over there' which brings to life the idea of the internet as a digital afterlife, a space filled with disembodied voices, presence and memory.
It's an idea picked up on by Jeffrey Sconce in his book 'Haunted Media', and one which I wrote about in Digital Me, an MA project I recently completed.
While the notion is metaphorical, I think the increasing use of technology in Paranormal investigation inevitably leads us to the idea of scrying online, an idea which is increasingly developed through popular culture - through films like The Ring, Phone, and more directly Internet related, Pulse.
An early example of computer scrying is The Vertical Plane by Ken Webster. Now out of print, it describes communications between Webster and a character called 'Tomas', seemingly sharing the same space across a divide of hundreds of years... Like some godawful movie with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, but with computers.
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7 comments:
I know what you mean.
Recently Helen was researching a script around blogs and personal identities and wanted to know if I knew anything about the alternative to Myspace, 'Mydeath'... I looked into it a bit:
(http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:
tgCL4zWEPJMJ:blog.outer-court.com/
archive/2005-10-09-n90.html+my+space
+dead&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=3)
... and found that there really is an after life...
BUT as usual it's an after life for the living and not the dead.
People spending their time writing posts, comments and sending messages to friends who have died (often young and tragically) after setting up myspace accounts.
The accounts keep running long after their deaths, creating the Mydeath space...
But of course, it doesn't matter how many messages you leave - you never get a reply.
Or do you?
I think the mydeath thing caused a few irritating problems for Myspace over last year and sites for the dead were taken down, more or less, but the thing that struck me were posts from people who NEVER knew the deceased at all.
Just passing through Myspce, connecting from one contact to another, one friend to another, one network to another until they find a face they like and see that they are communicating with the dead... and part of a whole community doing the same thing.
There may not be ghosts in the system, but there are a hell of a lot of people talking to the dead.
Internet mediums.
(sorry I took this comment down - I just don't know how to re-edit it or add to it after I preview it - ho hum - useless at 'puters)
was reading the original link:
"Jan Harold Brunvand, the scholar who first popularised the term "urban legend" believes that the Internet has "killed" the urban legend."
maybe it's true that Urban Legends are dead, but the FOAF tale may not be.
FOAF (or 'Friend of a Friend') is HOW an Urban Legend is spread and it's tale disseminated - "This happened to a friend of a friend..." can be surplanted by the internet version "A friend of a friend told me that this happened..."
Continuing from my last post - the best compiler of Urban Legends on the Internet, at least from a US perspective is Snopes, it may not be as informative as Brunvand, but it is very detailed and has two sections dedicated to the world of computers and that:
One dedicated to Viruses:
Including Invatation or Olympic Torch virus, a hoax, and real ones.
You can find that here:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/
virus/virus.asp
The great thing is that the status of these hoaxes or myths are altered as new information is confirmed. So some hoaxes are in fact found to be real and vise versa.
the same applies for:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/
internet/internet.asp
Which is much more interesting in relation to this blog site.
here you will find all sorts:
WordOfMouth.org where you can find out what people are saying about you!
Japanese software that replaces error messages with pleasent Hiaku's!
Security myths.
AOL stealing the contents of your emails
and so on...
Over all the site is great anyway.
so check it out if you have time, it's like a vortex and confirms one of the FACTS about the internet: an internet user minute lasts 60 times longer than a real minute!
snopes is good - the 'horrors' section has two great articles about MySpace and IM hauntings (essentially chain letters).
'FOAF' and chain letters are certainly something which thrive on the Internet, and especially through email.
I'm thinking of the email game where you answer a load of questions and then scroll down to receive a future/personality analysis or whatever (the scroll being like the fold in the paper on similar non electronic versions...
Then, at the bottom of the email, you are asked to send it on to 10 other people within a week, and you will be rewarded with love/riches/health. It's essentially asking you to spam, but with no attempt to sell viagra or click some NSFW link!
It becomes Urban Legend, I think, when this kind of thing gets added; 'I know someone who didn't forward this email onto 10 other people within a week, and died horribly'...
So I'm not sure urban legends are 'dead', but maybe they've changed in that they are not tied to one spot anymore. Although Urban Legends are repeated and retold the world over, they tend to be related to our locality - i.e. 'You know that tree by Asda, well 40 years ago...' - these new Urban Legends deal with massive distribution over a global network, which while they may refer to a specific place, their power and their means of spreading are particular to that medium.
FAQ by Brunvand on his site;
www.janbrunvarnd.com
Iain M. Banks in Feersum Enjun builds the whole world around the word play of data encryption and crypts as places for dead bodies. He posits the notion of old data slowly drifting to the bottom of a cyberspace where it gradually decays.
Re Brunvand: his point is not that urban legends had disappeared but that Internet sources such as Snopes and AFU meant that people had become so aware of the stories that they rarely believed in them when told face to face. I happen to think he's wrong but I do think that the very act of naming these stories and identifying them as a genre has massively affected the stories and their dissemination.
Great to see this blog getting some traction. I think you've identified something interesting here.
Bruce
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