Posted on by hmurphy

Lifestreams of consciousness – week 1

End of week 1, and the end of a busy old week for me. Work has been less ‘life-stream’, more ‘life-oh-look-the-dam-has-burst’, and it’s left me not only wishing I was at least a little more part-machine but also feeling a little behind in terms of study.

If I had to describe my lifestream activity this week in one word it would be tentative. I don’t really know what I’m doing yet, which is leading to me giving in to the pressure to create content for the sake of it, which is also leading to me having to constantly curate this blog to account for the fact that it’s mainly a random stream of consciousness. Yet too there’s a sense that the lifestream is meant to be a technological extension of my general contemplation on the course themes, and so the randomness of it would seem to fit.

My lifestream this week contains a few tweets about blog aesthetics, reminders of things I mean to read and think about (Donna Haraway), and a lot of Blade Runner. I got the latter off my chest in a blog post earlier today, where I wrote about empathy and what it means to be human, which led me towards the intersection between my consideration of course themes and what’s happening in the rest of the world. “Increasingly the body is seen as the principal site for the exercise of power and surveillance”, writes Miller (p. 209): in a week where the alleged number of bodies attending specific events is dominating the news, and where physical embodiment is seen as being politically relevant, this feels exceptionally well-timed.

 

5 Replies to “Lifestreams of consciousness – week 1”

  1. Believe me, I know and feel your pain, to coin and mingle a couple cliches.

    I too feel a bit dazed and confused as to how all this twitter and Blogging is to come together. For me, the saving aspect is that IFTTT has seemed to bring it all together so I don’t find myself shifting from one site to the other. I like the concept of space and how we occupy it and transform it, but I would rather do it one space at a time.

    In any case, I am enjoying your posts and think once we get “in the groove” (there is another one of those pesky cliches), it’ll turn out right.

    1. Thanks, Philip – it’s always reassuring to know that there are a few of us in this boat. I like your spatial interpretation of using IFTTT – I wonder if it speaks to our using spaces to reveal different things about ourselves, and if bringing all of that together into one space disrupts the equilibrium we think we may have established…

  2. Helen I’ve just been reflecting in my own lifestream on the similarities between how you’re feeling and my own thoughts.

    I agree with Philips comments above that ‘it’ll turn out right in the end’, although what’s right for each of us might be different.

    I couldn’t agree more on the aesthetics and I’ve made some comments in my blog about that being a peculiarly human trait.
    Did you manage to automate the tweets in your lifestream to look the way they do or have you had to do some manual interventions?

  3. Thanks Nigel! As I said above, it’s really reassuring to find many of us feeling the same way. I managed to automate the tweets following the instructions of Cathy Hills and it worked for the first few, but then it’s been duplicating the recent tweets so I think something’s gone wrong somewhere. I plan to try and figure out what’s happened and then blog about it!

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