Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

15 years of Infocult

On August 12th, 2003, Infocult was born. 

It didn't struggle to the earth's surface like an ancient monster bricked up by lost civilizations since time immemorial.  Infocult didn't manifest from unholy rites conducted in forbidden military installations.  Infocult didn't whisper uncannily  from that digital speaker you were convinced you'd turned off just before you went to sleep.

Instead, this blog began fifteen years ago with two posts.  In fact, we commenced with an abiding interest in blogging and what we then called "Web 2.0."  Revisiting these oldest entries summons up fragments of the 21st century's first years, before Facebook, the iPhone, and president Trump.

The site's design hasn't changed much.  It still looks like the pre-WordPress, pre-mobile web.

When I think of this blog's arc over the past decade and a half, I imagine it focused on three things, the site's unholy trinity:

1. The ways we fear technologies
2. Gothic texts
3. Real-life Gothic horror

Scrolling back over the teeming archives confirms this, but also adds much more.  There was an interest in the history of information.  Gaming and/as storytelling cropped up for a time, as did Web 2.0 storytelling.  Copyright was nearly an obsession for a few years.

Over time those faded out as the unholy trinity grew to rule the blog.  I think this happened for personal and professional reasons.  I started up a blog on the NITLE site and devoted time to that, and so the new blog soaked up some of my interest in education and technology topics.  (That blog disappeared during NITLE's last years, when the entire site was replaced with a handful of new pages; since then the domain has gone unowned.) Then I started my own blog, and that picked up still more of those interests and my time.

Infocult became my Gothic remnant, the skeleton remaining once the flesh has migrated... elsewhere.  And the skeleton has grown in its own way as the times have changed.  We pay attention to creepy clowns and sinkholes, along with the mysterious severed foot plague.  Infocult is halfway to Charles Fort.

It's not as popular as my professional blog.  Comments rarely occur.  I'm not sure of when someone last linked here.

Yet people keep suggesting stories.  Jesse Walker, Steven Kaye, Ed Webb, Todd Bryant, Randy McCall, Thomas Burkdall have generously emailed me creepy accounts.  So has my family.  It's a bit disturbing to think that Infocult began when my daughter was 7; she's now 22.  Brian Lamb exhorted a terrified Vancouver audience to read here. Jim Groom has loved this blog with his B-movie heart. And Andrew Connell has made Infocult's Draculablog possible.

It's as if Infocult occupies a quiet corner of the shambling web, persistently chronicling dread and horror, kept afloat by my obsessions and those of some friends.  And that's fine.

Thank you for fifteen terrifying years, friends.  Onward!

 

"I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula"

3 May. Bistritz.-- Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

Yes, it's time for the Count to ride again, as the Draculablog sets off!

Weird stuff shambles onto the Web

Here's a fine new Web thing, the Weird Fiction Review.

What's it covering?

an ongoing exploration into all facets of the weird, in all of its many forms — a kind of non-denominational approach that appreciates Lovecraft but also Kafka, Angela Carter and Clark Ashton Smith, Shirley Jackson and Fritz Leiber — along with the next generation of weird writers and international weird. 

 

Month of digital storytelling: progress so far

At the start of May I announced a project, a month of digital stories. How has it played out so far?

• I build each day's entry in my New Digital Storytelling blog . That content automatically feeds my Amazon author page.
• Then I carry each post over to my Goodreads author blog, which lets me use most HTML.
• Next I copy the resulting page content to the book's Facebook page, and paste in as much as that site's update text field allows (420 characters, I think).
• All of this is backed by two book information and purchase sites, from the publisher and Amazon.

So what are the effects?  It's hard to say.  The book is selling ("#57,679 in Books", just now, says Amazon), but I can't determine how much is driven by this daily posting.  No comments on these sites yet, nor links to specific items (a couple to the WordPress site).

Personally, it's very rewarding.  First, it helps me rethink examples of the many types of new digital storytelling.  Second, it's handy to have a giant pile of stories to use.

Meanwhile my blog-based Dracula project hums along.  Jonathan Harker is beginning to realize things are Not Good.

(photo of Barbara Ganley, myself, and the Cogdog)

Best blog metaphor of all time

my blog is like a cigar-box full of pinned, still-living bugs.

-Bruce Sterling, in conversation with Jon Lebkowsky

 

 

The devil is a black glove we wear to hide our own fingerprints. I blame you.

The feverish blog of Warren Ellis has just been squatted on by Steven Aylett.  The author of Slaughtermatic, the brain behind The Caterer, introduces himself in brain spasms.

KILLING FROM A DISTANCE: I sent a copy of my juvenilia The Crime Studio to William Burroughs – a week later he was dead. I sent a copy of Bigot Hall to Stephen Fry and he went temporarily insane. It really began when I got a copy of The Crime Studio into Broadmoor to get a blurb remark from Ronnie Kray. He didn’t provide a blurb remark but decided he wanted to be a writer, and sent me a story about a young man on the way to be hanged, a tender bloom to be cut down like a flower. Fearing reprisals if I said it was crap, I decided to ignore the entire situation. 

Twitter under attack

Twitter's down.  According to their status blog,

We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

A blog triumph

Today I left the local public library, two fine works of spy fiction under my arm.  Let me pause to reflect on just how good one blogging experience was.

Last week I had a sudden hankering for good spy stories, after watching some episodes of the astonishing British spy series, Sandbaggers.  But I didn't have a lot of luck checking Google and Amazon for the kinds of fiction I had in mind.  Amazon lists didn't pan out, and Google results were too broad.

So I blogged about my desire, listing a few titles I was thinking of, trying to narrow down what I had in mind.  A bunch of people posted suggestions in the comments.  More people contacted me directly, via IM, and in several conversations within the fine Brainstorms community.

Next, I assembled a list, then blogged it.  When that appeared, still more people offered suggestions, and commented on each other's.  So I revised the list, revised it again, and am delighted with the results.  It looks like a lot of fun reading.  And it will probably grow as i read, and as more suggestions flow in.

What a win for online collaboration.  Open expression of interest, hyperlinks, comments, responses, and aggregation.  Between this blog and Brainstorms, I now have a rich syllabus (Kim is a treat so far, btw).  The results are out on the Web, for anyone with an interest in this subject.  And this process is visible (on the blog side), and now commented upon.

Many thanks to all!

Alien invasion via Twitter

What does the Twitter front page look like, when aliens invade the Earth?

I love that someone's complaining about Twitter being down.

The same blogger also mounted a zombie attack via Twitter:

Several interesting elements concerning web 2.0 storytelling:

1. The importance of genre.  These are sf/horror staples.
2. Neither of these are actually Twitter pages, but mocked-up images.  Perhaps stories depicting Web 2.0 storytelling, rather than using such a platform directly, constitute another strain of the movement.  Compare with "Harvey Feldspar's Geoblog" for a similar example.
3. Blurring of fiction and reality continues.  According to comments on the first post, some of the people portrayed in the image are actually people.

Howard Rheingold launches videoblog

Howard Rheingold has launched a vlog.  Head there at once!