So looks like everything is ok so I can actually post some new material. I find it hard to keep with the blog when I can’t do it from home and the house I am staying at right now does not have net access so I have to schlep to school to use the computers. So that also explains my recent absence among other things…

But really I have been busy in Chi-town working on a paper for what was a most excellent excellent conference organized by mr. golub who did a fine fine job playing the gracious host (which is what a conference organizer really is, a meta-host of sorts.

OK, so in brief, the conference was great because it was a venue of cross-pollination, bees of every kind buzzing with great talks, words, humor, and insight. Seriously, with theologians, gamers, economists, anthropologists, cultural critics, designers, linguists, and historians you will be stung by different perspective which is key when we analyze the so called net. Being pigeonholed in any hard and fast way to one main viewpoint is, imho, analytical death or at least analytical mundaness. So if anything being at a cross disciplianary conference like this gets you out of that entropic hole.

I got to meet some of the finer bloggers out there like AKMA, JOHO, and net.narrative environments among others. I have been avoiding going to new blogs because of the T2 (Tanto Tiempo! That is Time) problem, but once I meet them, I can’t resist them.

So, there was so much to munch on and I feel like I need like a cow’s 7 stomachs to digest it all. How does a view of the body on the net differ when you throw in theology, using branding and semiotics (how a brand is once a thing and an idea/symbol) to understand the relationship between meatspace and meetspace, blogging as a counterveiling force against the anal perfectionism of American culture, the Talmud as a similar geography and practice as web-linking and on and on and on. You can get the summaries at the conference website. And I think eventually all the papers will be online and perhaps published.

Otherwise, I am exhausted. Insomia has been rampant and looking for an apt for Sept in May is no easy task especially when the weather has been acting like one fat brat: cold. But I think we secured something so now I will wrap up in Chicago with some more mind-numbing errands, seeing some great friends, and enjoying this fine fine city!