Blooking Central
J.A. Eddy
Blooking Central is a blog by Cheryl Hagedorn specializing in articles about blogs that have made the transition into books. It is not a book review, rather she explores the mechanisms of how a blog can be transformed into a book- what has worked, what hasn't and what services are out there for people interested in trying to take that big step with their own blogs.
I mention this because Dean and I were recently written up on Blooking Central after she ran into Methuselah's Daughter via the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize. She asked some detailed questions and I responded- Dean chimes in through the comments (or he better have by the time this posts!). Check out what we had to say, and stick around to browse the site- pretty interesting stuff to be found there.
Coincidentally enough I am writing a book right now (fictional, but based upon real events) about a group of Intel agents who find their way onto real websites and message boards, and by employing standardized net lingo, among other things, (but adapted for a separate and private code and cypher) are able to communicate with other agents around the world on normal message boards, and thereby pass useful intelligence along the vectors of these boards and websites without anyone else realizing what they are doing, what information they are really passing, or even how it is done. I'm not gonna say how it is really done, ever, just address the general idea in the book.
Anywho it alls started as an experiment I (and some buddies of mine) devised when I began to conceive (after 9/11) of how the public internet might be employed as a covert communications and encoding link in the open without the possibility of detection, and what that might mean. You might think of it as a counter-reaction to terrorists employing the web to their ends, but in this case the point is not to establish sites which are then frequented by others (and thereby traceable) or even to worm a way onto another site with an invisible and underlying code set, but to communicate openly and publicly on open source net and web sites but to do so in such a way as to transmit pertinent and valuable information in covert form, but by overt and yet unrecognized means.
In other words one might read this message and say, "well, it is a response to the subject matter of the thread," and so it is. It might also, although not in this case, be a secondary encoded and/or encrypted message which any reader, if he were able to recognize it as such, might be able to read (given the proper set of circumstances). The main point is to employ things easily recognizable in any environment (in this case web communications, message boards, etc.) and then by pre-arranged code or cypher, etc. transform those ordinary objects into useful methods of transmitting data or information or intelligence. The same can be done by overlaying or underlying codes in pictures, videos, films, etc. Steganographic graffiti so to speak.
Since the internet is so ubiquitous as a method of communication I thought the very ubiquity and the culture itself should be exploited to a useful purpose, without the need to isolate out or develop new methods of either communication or transmission.
I've tried the same kind of experiments with blogs but the nodes of interaction make that a rather self-limiting prospect most of the time. Other venues are superior in that respect.
Anyway I've experimented for a long time with Environmental Encoding. I've always been more interested in passing data, information, and Intel through ordinary objects and circumstances and events than through complex systems of entirely artificial means. Because when you use artificial means it is easy to understand the nature of what you are perceiving, even if you don't understand the specific information being passed. A coffee cup is a better method of transiting data, because most people never think of it as anything but a coffee cup (that is people think of the coffee as coffee, and so it is, but it might also be a chemical code in liquid form), than a complex encryption device which is limited because if discovered someone will recognize its' function even if they can't decipher the contents, and because it is a specialized device it cannot be employed in any environment. But if you transform practically anything in your environment, including biological systems, into code and crypt transceivers, then you never are at a loss of means of communications and because practically anything can be employed for that purpose, it is extremely difficult to know what is being employed, or in what way.
It seemed the web was an excellent virtual environment to make Environmental Encoding work, and for the most part it works rather well (given certain inherent structural limitations)..
Since formats shift so rapidly, and since data decays at such a tremendous rate on the internet (by that I mean the data shell is preserved, but loss of personal and psychological interest is almost instantaneous - people always want the next thing, meaning that public communications are extremely easy to establish but because the decay rate is so frenetic then it is also easy to carry on extensive and long lasting covert communications because everyone else is already off chasing the next rabbit), it is easy to wash anything harmful almost immediately by simply shifting methodologies or even sites. As a matter of fact floating site assumption works best. But of course you can always just wait about 24 hours or so and the internet has already outrun you to the next fleeting point of interest, meaning, you're then at your leisure to proceed as you wish.
Anywho the term Blog Transformation on the Blooking site reminded me of the whole affair.
Coincidentally enough that was one of my initial objectives, Blogging Transformation, but in a different context of course.
Well, gotta jet.
Good luck with your efforts and I enjoyed reading the interview.
I'll probably revisit that blog as well.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.