E.M. 9/28/06 Pre-class post.

Henry Jenkins speaks on "Fan Culture" "Not surprisingly, participatory cuture is running ahead of the the technological developments neccessary to sustain industrial visons of media convergences.." (jenkins 554) Oddly enough I could never understand fan fiction. On reading "Fan fiction" on the Harry Potter fan sites-- I found the writing for the most part to be OK not great. Some was very very good. I felt that the writers were wasting their time. why not create your own magical universe. Why Harry? The only answer I could come up with and obviously Jenkins and I are in agreement - community. via the internet people who have similar interests can connect through a single very narrow medium. Fan fiction you can become as Jenkins says part of the "Participatory Cuture" - This is found in " Fans respond to this situation of an increaingly privatized cuture by appying the traditional practices of a folk culture to mass cuture, treating film or television as if it offered them raw materials for telling their own stories and resources for forging their own communities." (556) Science fiction conventions are full of such communities and subcommunities branching out and interconnecting. Distance is no longer a factor the access to the internet is the link between humans. For years William Shatner was plauged with Trekkies who wanted to glom on to him and go on and on about a show he did in the sixties. To his adoring fans William Shatner is not an actor he is Captain Kirk. William Shatner has since changed his thinking on this subject and feels that the Trekkies of the world are a bit off but have some qualities that are not so bad. Such as they find the higher ideals of universal acceptance of all cultures either human or otherwise. Find strange new worlds and if the babes are nice... well.. you get the idea.
I belong to the SCA otherwise known as the Society for Creative Anachronism - started in the late sixties in a back yard by some Berkley grad student. Now a world wide Organization. Yet the SCA deomographic has changed - Not as many poor college age students, more upward mobile proffesionals with more extra income. The SCA idealized vision of a "participatory community" has evolved. In some ways for the good in others not. One thing I have noticed is that with the advent of Everquest we lost members our numbers dropped and people stayed home to become a 58th level mage/knight. No longer were they actually making the clothes or armor. They just did it vitually. After they gained about 50lbs and lost thier friends - some came back and other never to be seen or heard again.The Jenkins piece validates much of what I have always thought about how the internet has changed our culture. I've noticed that when we went to 10,000 people plus Pennsic war you were lucky to have cell phone access. This year I found they had an internet cafe. I thought wow! why would you have to get on th internet while on your vacation. Can't you just recreate the middle ages -leave the lap top home. Not so - my mate was called on his cell phone while out on the battle field in 14c Armor by his German owned company. It seems Germany called they changed the requirements on a large insurance project. Mark had to trudge up the hill take off his armor and walk down into the not so little medeival Market that gets set up each year-- and pay his twenty bucks for 30 mins. of computer time. We took him his Dinner so he could work I walked around the market place and purchased his Italian Food so he could eat while he worked. In the little cafe were other men and women - some checkng emails out of habit others for work - busy over their collection of computers. In the coner I spied one man who was playing a online medieval game - while in Medieval clothes. We i.e. humanity. have become plugged in - can we unplug?