Manifesto Meta Musings

First, let me start off by saying I dislike the word “Manifesto,” it sounds, oh I don’t know, just too grand and at the same time really ambiguous.

But that’s the word we have and the high zen dictator has spoken, so I’ll diss the term no further.

I have read some of pfiore8’s ramblings on how “might makes right” has to be turned on its head, that we have to begin realizing that we do have our own power, that we are not powerless even in the face of such strong oppression and “might” directed against us.

I have also rambled a lot myself speaking of thinking “outside the box.”

Well that’s all well and good, lots of rambling, and now I’m getting tired of that word, too!  Bleh.

Folks have said they’ll work on various issues of this marvelous Manifesto.  And here’s where my meta comes in.  If you are interested … there’s more!

Think for a moment about the “community” blogs, all of ’em, Daily Kos, My Left Wing, Docudharma, Political Fleshfeast, any others you may want to name.

You get a diary, or in our case an essay.  Then there are comments, the ol’ back and forth.

I find this restricting.  And I’ll list a few examples of different means of communicating to try and illustrate alternatives.

multi-user essays What if you had an essay with maybe two or more posters contributing?  This could come in many forms — could be a debate, where you see the actual discussion in the essay itself, John says this, Mary responds in opposition, Hortense supports a third point of view and George just makes fun of the other three.  The essay itself would have as the title the topic to be debated and discussed.

Instead of comments, folks would be encouraged to write essays supporting one side or the other, or promulgating a different point of view entirely.

Issue Coalitions  Several posters take on a single issue and link each other’s essays into their own.  As was mentioned in buhdy’s Manifesto essay, several folks volunteered to work on various aspects of researching, etc.  In my case, I have several areas of interest on social justice issues that I’ve noticed a few others are interested in as well, including meta issues on how to drop our own blogging prejudices and write in a new way.

So we could have essay “coalitions,” where folks on various teams who have decided to tackle specific issues write individual essays that link together to form a whole.  Again, there can be comments within those essays, but there would also be groups of essays that are interrelated.  This would be similar to what we saw yesterday with everyone blogging on the environment as much as they could — but more individual to Docudharma.

MULTIMEDIA!  We can audioblog and we can videoblog.  I think this would add a great dimension to Docudharma.  DianeW posted about MSOC starting an internet radio show — we could do this as well — we could also use Gabcast (as I did here with my tune, as a test), and we could also do videoblogging of our own on various issues.  Mix it up.

Okay, I’m done with these few examples.  And they don’t really speak of the real breakthrough I’m looking for, “thinking outside the box,” but they could help spark that kind of breakthrough.  We certainly have the tools to give a wider and deeper view of this Manifesto buhdy keeps jawing about.

Heck, I wish we could have a blog where there was animation, essays floating around the page, in circles, in star-shapes, audio, telepathy, magic!  Three-dee, like in Farenheit 451, where that daft woman spoke to the holographic walls.

But we don’t have that right now.  I do think, though, we can do better.